


Every  Time a Bell Rings

by fuzzballsheltiepants



Category: All For The Game - Nora Sakavic
Genre: Alternate Universe - Afterlife, Andrew's trying to be an angel, Depression, LITERALLY, M/M, Neil is depressed, Shocking I know, Slow Burn, Sort Of, Suicide Attempt, This is a weird mix of angst and humor, We'll see if he manages, Wymack is God, homeless Neil
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-07-27
Updated: 2018-10-14
Packaged: 2019-06-17 09:16:46
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 17
Words: 56,704
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15458112
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/fuzzballsheltiepants/pseuds/fuzzballsheltiepants
Summary: Nathaniel has been lost since his mother died.  According to the authorities, he died too, in the shootout that killed his father.  In reality, he's been dragging himself along from town to town, sleeping on the streets, lacking even a name.  He's not sure how he's been surviving, or if it's even worth it anymore.Andrew has been stuck in the waiting room of the Afterlife, reading the same stupid pamphlets and listening to the same terrible music, ever since he was collateral damage in the car wreck that eliminated his mother.  Until he gets a chance to take over the guardianship of one particularly difficult person and possibly earn his wings--if he can keep the idiot alive.Basically, an It's a Wonderful Life AU featuring our favorite Foxes.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> I blame Nicole @tntwme for this, though to be fair I don't think even she expected it to end up this long. She gets credit for the beta read too, as always. TW for suicidal thoughts and half-hearted attempts; I will add more specific chapter TWs as we go. If you have any questions re: specifics, HMU at my Tumblr, [@fuzzballsheltiepants](https://fuzzballsheltiepants.tumblr.com/)

He was just so, so tired.  
  
It had been days since he’d last slept properly; no, more like weeks.  He couldn’t even really remember.  The rainbow of bruises over his fractured ribs made it almost impossible to find a comfortable position, especially on bare ground.  The cops were starting to notice him hanging around the park.  He’d have to move on soon, but he didn’t know if he could find the energy.  
  
He didn’t even have a name right now.  He’d been Alex when he’d punched that guy and gotten his ass kicked in response, but he hadn’t been able to think of a new one suitable for this hellhole.  There was his favorite name, the one he’d saved, tucked away for a better time and a better place, but he wasn’t willing to waste it on this life.  The license and passport would keep.  Or maybe that would be the name he’d be buried under.  
  
He found a shady spot out of view of the sidewalk and curled up in a ball, his duffel under his head.  Sleep found him in short snatches, not enough to provide relief; when voices sounded way too close he got up, brushed himself off, pulled a leaf out of his overlong hair, and started walking.  
  
Stomach grumbling, he wandered into the closest chain restaurant.  The woman behind the counter looked him up and down.  “Kid, you’re going to have to leave.  We’re not a charity operation.”  
  
“I have money,” he said, his voice coarse from thirst and disuse.  But when she just crossed her arms and glared at him he turned and dragged himself away.  
  
There was a cafe across town, and he knew the woman there would let him sit in the AC and eat and drink in peace.  But three days ago she’d slipped him a bowl of pasta salad he hadn’t ordered, and yesterday she’d given him half a dozen cookies for free, saying they were too old to sell.    
  
They’d still been warm.  He’d eaten them for dinner.  
  
He didn’t think he could handle her green-eyed concern again.  The 7-11 on the corner was a safe bet, and he went in there and bought two bottles of water and a three-day-old sandwich, then sat on the curb and devoured it.  A couple of younger kids riding bikes across the street paused and stared at him.  Polishing off one water bottle, he tucked the other into the net at the end of his duffel and headed down the road that led out of town, the children’s light voices chasing after him.  
  
More and more, he was starting to think this life was going to kill him, slowly and painfully.  His mother would have raged at his resignation; she had fought death for as long as she could, and had kept him from it by taking the lives of others again and again.  But she was gone now, had been for years, and he was forgetting how to keep going.  
  
Sometimes he didn’t understand how he was still alive.  He bore scars of wounds that should have killed him, had escaped by jumping out of the upper story of buildings without breaking his legs, had leaped from a moving car into oncoming traffic, but somehow he always got up, always kept breathing.  
  
The road crossed a river that bordered the town.  Halfway across, his feet stopped of their own accord.  The water was deep and swift thanks to summer rains in the mountains north of town, and he could almost hear it calling to him.  Not by any of his former names, but by the one name, the perfect name that he had never fully claimed.  This could end, right now.  This pain that flared with every breath, the emptiness that echoed with every weary step.  It would be done with, and he could be in sweet oblivion.  Gone.  It wasn’t like anybody would notice; he’d been invisible for years.  All he had to do was throw his legs over the railing and let go.  
  
*****  
  
Andrew had been sitting in the waiting room for what felt like an eternity.  It may, in fact, have been an eternity; time kind of stopped making sense once you were dead.  He still didn’t know why he’d been stuck here.  After all the shit he’d done he had expected to go straight to hell when that car jumped the median.  But for some reason, no.  It was just this boring room with informational brochures about the Guardian Angel Program (called Mind the GAP; Andrew kind of wanted to smack whoever had come up with that one) and background music that was probably supposed to be soothing but instead bored into his brain like a drill.  Of course, this could have been hell, but he doubted it; there was nobody else here.  
  
He jumped when a door he hadn’t known existed slid open and a disembodied voice said, “Please proceed to the pearly gates to meet with the Archangel.”  Slowly he walked through the opening, blinking against the cheerful sunshine.  The gates couldn’t be missed; they were enormous and ostentatious, and did in fact shimmer like pearl.  Part of him wanted to turn around, jump off the cloudy material he was standing on, anything but deal with an eternity of harp playing and nice people, but he clenched his fists and kept going.  
  
A woman with short hair and rich mahogany skin was waiting at the gates, enormous wings folded behind her, so bright Andrew couldn’t look at them directly.  He stopped in front of her, and she greeted him with a slight nod.  “Andrew,” she said, and her voice was commanding.  “Welcome.  I am the Archangel.”  
  
“I thought you were supposed to be a man,” he said.  
  
“I get that all the time,” was her reply, and she turned and began walking along the wall towards a small building.  He followed, bemused; he wasn’t sure whether he was more irritated that everything he’d heard was probably going to be wrong, or that he wasn’t even unique in his assholery.  
  
She opened the door and beckoned him inside.  The walls were covered in a million tiny screens, humans of all sizes, shapes, and colors moving across them.  A large man sat at a desk in the center, faint flames flickering up his arms.  He had no visible wings, but the energy radiating off of him felt like a nuclear explosion.  “Andrew,” he said, in a voice that was all voices, deep and high, masculine and feminine, harsh and beautiful.  “Welcome.  You may call me Coach.”  
  
Andrew said nothing.  Coach and the Archangel studied him for a long moment.  “Have you read the brochures for the Guardian Angel Program?” Coach asked.  
  
“You already know I did.”  
  
Coach conceded that with a nod.  “Is it something you think you’d be willing to participate in?”  
  
Andrew’s eyebrows furrowed.  “Why the fuck would you want someone like me?”  
  
Neither of them blinked at the curse.  “Sometimes the best choices to help troubled people are those whose own lives were troubled,” the Archangel said.  “We have some of our best savior work done by those who have taken lives themselves.  It is about what is in your soul, not what you did with your human life.”  
  
“And you think I have it in my soul to help someone in trouble.”  
  
“It does not matter what we believe,” Coach said.  “It matters what you believe.”    
  
Andrew snorted.  “You’ve got the wrong guy,” he said.  “Maybe you meant my brother, he always wanted to be a doctor.”  
  
“Your brother is already part of the program,” the Archangel said, and Andrew recoiled.    
  
“He’s dead?”  
  
“Mmm.  A drug overdose.”  
  
_Fuck fuck fuckfuckfuckfuckfuck_.  It hadn’t occurred to him that with him gone, there would be nobody to get Aaron off the drugs.  “Your ‘GAP’ must be a pretty shitty program if it can’t stop things like that.”  
  
“It is because of your brother, and millions of others like him, that we are trying this new phase in our program,” Coach said.  “We can’t always save people in the traditional way.  After all, we can’t take away free will.  But maybe we can help them to save themselves.”  
  
“So, what you’re telling me is you have a supernatural Big Brothers/Big Sisters program going on up here.”  
  
Coach made a noise that may have been laughter.  “You can think of it that way, if you like.”  He gestured to the screens.  “These are the people we are trying to help.  You may look.”    
  
Andrew walked to one wall.  There was a teenager crying in his room, and somehow Andrew knew he had just come out to his parents.  A girl in a bathroom, hunched over a toilet.  A woman in a man’s body.  A child, hiding from her uncle.  A kid, tightening a tourniquet around his bicep.  A young man, stumbling down a road, dragging a duffel behind him, despair across every line of his body.    
  
There was a knock on the door, and Andrew tore his gaze away from the screen he’d been watching to see an angel enter.  Tall, dark-haired, green-eyed, with iridescent wings; he looked vaguely like Coach and briefly Andrew thought about asking if he was Jesus.  “Kevin,” Coach said.  “What brings you here?”  
  
“This guy,” Kevin said.  “Nathaniel, or whatever name he wants to go by now.  I can’t do it, I can’t get through to him.  I keep trying to help, but I think he’s out of reach.”  
  
“You have been very focused on helping his physical body,” the Archangel said, “but that is not the damage that needs our skills.”  
  
“If I don’t help him physically, he’s going to get himself killed.  I’ve been going crazy just trying to keep him from getting murdered, but then he does something stupid like piss off a biker three times his size.  I don’t even know how many bullets I’ve blocked, or how many times I’ve slowed his falls.”  
  
Andrew glanced back at the screen with the man with the duffel.  He didn’t know why, but he was certain this was who this angel—Kevin—was talking about.  The Archangel was saying something, but Andrew wasn’t listening.  There was something on the man’s face, something too familiar.  Something he’d seen on his own face, more than once, when he looked in the mirror with a blade to his wrist.  
  
“Hey, asshole?” Andrew said, waving his hand.  Kevin and the Archangel stopped talking and looked at him in surprise, while Coach looked vaguely amused.  “This your guy?”  
  
“Yes, it is.  Who’re you?” Kevin asked.  
  
“New guy,” Coach said.  “We’re recruiting.”  
  
“Oh, Jesus,” Kevin said, and it was Andrew’s turn to be surprised; was this a curse when you were in heaven?  “Just what we need, another attitude problem.”  
  
“Shut up,” Andrew said, and talked over whatever Kevin was going to say in response.  “I’m trying to help you here, dipshit.  Your guy’s about to go over.”  
  
“Damnit,” Kevin said, rushing to the screen.  Andrew half-expected Coach’s energy to go supernova on them all but he just radiated amusement.  It took a minute before Andrew realized the amusement was directed at him.  
  
Kevin let out a long-suffering sigh, drawing Andrew’s attention back to the screen.  “All right, let me go down and catch him, then I’ll figure something out.”  
  
“Catching him isn’t going to solve anything,” Andrew said.  
  
“It’s going to make him a lot less dead,” Kevin replied, rolling his eyes.  
  
“Yeah, for now.  But if it’s not this now, it’ll be something else later.”  All three of them were staring at him.  “Didn’t you just tell me it’s about helping people save themselves?”  
  
“You have a better idea?”  
  
Andrew looked back at the screen and hesitated.  He hadn’t even managed to save his own brother, in the end.    
  
“Touch the screen,” the Archangel said.  It didn’t make sense, but Andrew found himself reaching for it anyway.  A brush of his fingers and a thousand images embedded themselves in his brain.  A young red-headed boy, watching as a larger version of himself carved up a screaming man.  His hands shaking when a knife was pushed into them, then the knife clattering to the floor and the boy bracing for the blow that took him off his feet.  The same boy running, running, a brown-haired woman next to him gripping his arm while gunshots rang out.  An older version with blond hair and gray eyes, sitting in a cafe in what looked like Paris.  Then light brown hair and brown eyes in a desert.  Dark hair and dark eyes as the woman gasped her last in the driver’s seat of a car.  The same boy—no, he was a man now—arguing with a man who was beating a dog.  Having a cigarette lighter pressed into the flesh of his arms.  The older red-haired man from the beginning falling in a shower of bullets.  Then back on the run in a new disguise.  Brown hair and piercing blue eyes, giving food to a man sleeping in a cardboard box.  Breaking up a gang of boys picking on another kid.  Punching a man in the throat for harassing a teenage girl, then getting the shit kicked out of him in an alley.    
  
Twenty years of a life, blinking by in a second.  When it was done, Andrew was reeling, but he knew what had to be done.  “Make him save you,” he said to Kevin.  
  
Kevin snorted.  “You’ve got no idea what you’re talking about.  You’ve been up here for five minutes, I’ve been doing this for ten years.  The whole reason he’s alive—”  
  
“Blah blah blah yeah, you’re wonderful, but he’s about to fucking kill himself.  Now, I don’t give a shit, but you obviously do.  He has a savior thing going on, think about what he did with that girl and those bullies and that dog.  Go down there and make him save you.”  
  
Coach stood up.  “Andrew.”  Andrew looked at him.  “I’m sending you down there.”  
  
“Coach, I don’t—”  
  
But he blinked and the room and the angels and the screens were gone.  
  
In its place was a bridge and the blinding sun, the pavement nearly hot enough to melt the soles of sneakers Andrew didn’t remember ever wearing.  The river roared down below, and the man was there on the opposite side, his duffel cast aside onto the bridge, his legs dangling.  He was about to drop, and Andrew had no time.  He glanced down and dizziness hit him at the distance between himself and the water.  Gritting his teeth against the nausea, he thought, _I’m already dead_ , and threw himself over the railing, a breathless scream tearing out of him as he fell.


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Andrew and Neil encounter each other, and Neil chooses his name. The rest of the Foxes make an appearance (well, most of them).

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Mentions of suicidal ideation. Thanks to @tntwme for the beta! Any remaining errors are my own.

He heard the scream, then the splash.  There was nothing on his side of the bridge; drawing himself back off the railing he ran across the road, dodging a car, to the other side.  He didn’t see how anyone could have survived the fall, but he had to check.    
  
A flash of gold glinted off the surface of the river, being dragged down swiftly.  He couldn’t tell if the person was moving at all, not with the chaos of the current.  He ran down the bank, kicking off his shoes.  Shedding his jeans at the water’s edge so they wouldn’t drag him down, he dove in.    
  
The water was murky, and it was hard to see, but he was a strong swimmer.  Breaking the surface, he caught another glimpse of what had to be a person and kicked off in that direction.  The current kept pulling him under but he fought through it until he caught a glimpse of fair skin bobbing along.  Then he swam with the current, finally reaching the person and grabbing on to their shirt.  Pulling them into his arms he pushed up to the surface again, gasping.  They weren’t breathing.  
  
He drove for shore as quickly as he could and dragged the man out of the water.  Setting him so he was resting on his side, he gave the Heimlich as best he could.  Water gushed out of the guy’s mouth and nose, but he still wasn’t breathing.  He pressed his ear to his chest.  Nothing.    
  
“God damnit,” he muttered.  He angled the man’s head back to open his airway, pinched his nose, and breathed hard into his mouth.  Remembering a distant CPR class, he rolled his hand and punched the guy firmly in the chest, right over the center of the sternum.  His limbs jumped slightly with the blow.  He gave another breath and then listened; this time he could hear a beat, a steady thrumming.  The man’s chest moved under his ear as he gasped in a breath, then started coughing.    
  
Relief swamped him and he fell back against the grassy bank, utterly wrung out.  If he’d been tired before, now he didn’t think he could move without a team of work horses or a tractor to pull him upright.  He listened to the harsh breathing next to him and stared up at the sky.    
  
A cloud shaped like a face winked at him.  He must be hallucinating.  His eyes drifted shut.  
  
*****  
  
Well, it had worked; the man had done exactly what Andrew had expected.  But damn, he hadn’t thought you could drown if you were already dead.  He better talk to Coach or the Archangel about the rules.  _If_ he was going to keep doing this.  
  
Andrew sat up and looked at the man next to him.  He seemed to be asleep; judging by what he’d seen in the screen, no doubt he needed it.  No sign of the ratty duffel he’d been dragging with him.  Probably contained his only possessions; Andrew wondered if it had been lost to the water.  He struggled to his feet and climbed back up to the bridge.  
  
The navy blue duffel was sitting halfway down the bridge.  If he hadn’t done what he did, it would have been the only sign of a life lost.  This man would have been just another who disappeared and was never thought of again.  Andrew didn’t know why that infuriated him.  
  
He hefted the bag over his shoulder and carried it down the slope.  On the way back, he snagged the abandoned shoes and jeans.  While he waited for the man to wake up, he sorted through the contents.  Cheap ratty clothes that were surprisingly clean; toothpaste, toothbrush, shampoo, comb.  A dead burner phone.  A camera in a padded case.  A binder.  He opened it to find plastic sheets that contained stunningly beautiful photographs in eight-by-ten prints.  Flipping through, he saw they were all of nature—trees, flowers, the swirl of water, all shot in an ethereal way by an eye that saw the beauty of what could be instead of what was.    
  
He was so taken by the photos he almost missed what they hid.  Certificates for money.  Coded numbers.  A slim switchblade.  Maps.  A passport and driver’s license for a “Neil Josten”.  He was pretty sure Kevin had said the guy’s name was Nathaniel, but whatever.  Stuffing it back in the duffel, he sat back to wait.  It was an effort not to stare at the man, with the way his wet t-shirt and boxers clung to his body, outlining…well, everything.  He forced himself to look at the leaves on the trees overhead instead.  
  
The man woke up about half an hour later with a sharp intake of breath and a panicked scramble.  When he caught sight of Andrew he let out a sigh.  “You’re okay,” he said hoarsely.  
  
“Yeah,” Andrew replied.  The man seemed to be expecting something more, and Andrew realized a moment too late that most people probably would’ve thanked the guy.  Oh well.  
  
The man staggered to his feet and quickly pulled his jeans and shoes on, then hefted his duffel over his shoulder.  “Uh, bye, then,” he said, then he climbed up the bank and disappeared.    
  
Andrew looked up at the sky.  “What happens now?”    
  
He blinked and was back in the room with the screens.  Four more angels had appeared while he was gone but the room did not feel crowded.  Kevin was sitting in a chair that had definitely not been there before, slumped over with his head in his hands.  One of the male angels was hooting.  “Kevin, you’re being that exasperated angel meme!  Like, the literal embodiment!  Damn, I wish I could post a picture of this right now.”  
  
“Shut up, Nicky,” Kevin muttered, dropping his hands to glare at Andrew.  “And that was super risky, new guy.  Nathaniel could have drowned.”  
  
Andrew ignored him and turned to Coach.  “Can I die when I’m down there?”  
  
“You’re already dead,” said a curvy blonde angel, rolling her eyes.    
  
Coach knew what he meant, though.  “No.  You can lose vital signs, but you’ll just end up back here.”  
  
The tallest angel was looking at Andrew in some confusion.  “Wait, there’s two of them?”  
  
“Catch up, Matt,” the blonde one said.  “You knew Aaron had a twin.”  
  
“Yeah, but I didn’t think he’d end up _here_ from what Aaron said.  Isn’t that why he took the Hades assignment?”  
  
“Aaron knew Andrew was in the Indecision,” the Archangel said.  The tall guy—Matt—turned his attention to her with a doe-eyed look and Andrew groaned internally.  Evidently being dead didn’t fix straight guys.  
  
“So, are you officially joining?” Blondie asked, looking at her nails.  
  
Andrew turned to the Archangel.  “If I don’t do this, what happens?”  
  
“You will remain in the Indecision until your soul declares itself.”  
  
Well, that was utterly fucking useless.  “So, basically, I’m stuck doing nothing for an eternity, until I either go insane with boredom and decide I’d rather be in hell, or agree to help you?”  
  
Coach was the one who answered.  “This is a trial for you, Andrew.  We are not certain you will be able to handle the responsibilities and earn your wings.  You may work with us and yet still end up in the Hades world if your soul shows that is where it truly belongs.”  
  
Oh, great.  “So why not just banish me there now?”  
  
“Because Coach is a softie for a sob story,” Blondie said.  “The Great Redeemer and all that.”  
  
“Not exactly, Allison,” the Archangel said reprovingly.  “Hades world is not punishment, and this is not reward,” she said to Andrew.  “Hades world is oblivion.  This is consciousness.  Here you retain your personality, your memories, and your desires.  In Hades world, you just exist.”  
  
Andrew wasn’t sure which one sounded better.  But then he remembered the intensity of the look in Nathaniel’s blue eyes, the way he’d dived in to pull Andrew out of the water, the peculiar beauty of his photographs, and he didn’t think he wanted to forget.  
  
He turned to Coach.  “What do I need to do to earn my wings?” he asked.   
  
“Help a person through a dark time,” Coach answered.  “Prove that you can guide others towards the light.”  
  
Help a person through a dark time.  What the actual fuck.  He wondered how they picked which poor saps got help and which had to struggle through on their own.  “Where were you assholes when I was sitting there with a blade to my wrist?”  
  
Nicky flinched and looked down; the movement, and the shift in mood, had Andrew glaring at him.  But it was the Archangel who answered him.  “You were only truly at risk once, at least before the car,” she said.  “Do you remember what stayed your hand?”  
  
Of course he did.  He needed to get out, to keep Aaron away from the monster that lurked in his foster home.  Getting arrested and serving time accomplished the same thing.  
  
She nodded as if he had spoken aloud.  “And where did that idea come from?”  
  
It was an idea; it came just like any other idea, it was just a product of synapses firing in his fucked-up brain.  “It was suggested to you,” she said with unexpected gentleness.  “You may not believe it, but it’s true.”  
  
Which meant this program had bought him an extra three years of life and five months with his brother.  Not enough, in the end, not if Aaron had ODed; he had still failed him in the end.  
  
“Everyone gets this choice?”  
  
“No.  People who have wrought deliberate evil do not get to help others.  They are condemned to oblivion.  Everybody else is a mix of good and evil, and is given the chance to earn their wings, should they choose.”  
  
Andrew mulled that over.  “But if Aaron died after I did, why is he already here?”  
  
The Archangel smiled, and the expression softened her stern face in a way Andrew could not have imagined.  “Aaron’s soul knew what he wanted from the moment he passed, though that does not mean he is not having his own challenges.  You needed time to be ready to choose.”  
  
Well, fuck.  Andrew had a feeling Coach already knew what was going to happen, but his face revealed nothing.  Only the flames on his arms flared a little higher.  Andrew sighed.  “So, the deal is, I help some jackass out of some sort of trouble, and I get my wings and keep my memories and everything.”  Coach nodded.  “Tell me what to do.”  This was going to suck, but at least it wouldn’t be boring.  
  
*****  
  
He hadn’t thought it was possible for his ribs to hurt worse than the first couple days after they were broken, but apparently swimming against a current dragging a full-grown man, even a small one, had been a poor idea.  By the time the trucker giving him the ride pulled over for the night, every breath was agony.  He showered at the truck stop, touched up his roots, and followed the blue signs through the streets of the mid-sized town.  
  
The hospital was small; it made it harder to remain anonymous but he didn’t have a choice.  _I should’ve just let the man die_ , he thought bitterly.  It wasn’t like the guy was even grateful.  At least not vocally so; the expression in his hazel eyes had been harder to read.  It had seemed knowing, excessively so.  As if the stranger had been sure he would be saved.  If only he had jumped a few seconds sooner, the stranger wouldn’t have been his problem, but it was too late now.  
  
He was alive; he might as well do something to make his sorry existence a little more comfortable.  With a sigh, he dug around in his binder and pulled out his sole remaining license.  He hated to waste it, but he could always use the alias here and then tuck it away again.  
  
There were two other people sitting in the waiting room.  He registered with the desk, filled out all the paperwork about payment and HIPPA and all the rest, making up an address by selecting one of the dark, empty houses he had passed on the way in.  
  
“This doesn’t match the address on your license, Mr. Josten,” the receptionist drawled.    
  
“Yeah, I just started renting it.  Haven’t had a chance to change my license yet.”  He infused his voice with just enough tired irritation to make it believable, and she accepted the lie without comment.  
  
Twenty minutes passed and finally he was brought into a curtained-off section of the emergency room.  A nurse took his vitals, looked a little concerned at his weight and blood pressure, and disappeared to get a doctor.  He almost fell asleep on the hospital bed despite the pain in his ribs but the sound of the curtain pulling back had him shooting upright.  It was impossible to hold back the groan that resulted.  
  
“Mr. Josten!” the doctor exclaimed, rushing to him and easing him back down.  She introduced herself as Dr. Winfield and examined him quickly but thoroughly.  She blinked at the scars all over his torso but didn’t comment, though she seemed to take extra care as she probed around his ribs.  “When did this happen?” she asked.  
  
“Couple weeks ago,” he said.  “Then I made it worse today swimming in the river.”  
  
She hesitated while palpating his abdomen and looked him in the eye.  “There’s no river within about fifty miles of here.”  
  
Shit.  “Yeah, I was visiting a friend over in Franklin,” he said, attempting a smile.  “I thought I was better enough to swim, but I guess not.”  
  
She hummed in reply and ordered x-rays of his ribs and some blood tests.  While they waited for results, a nurse hooked him up to an IV and gave him some pain meds.  It dulled the pain enough that he could take a deep breath, and he felt muscles easing all the way up his back and into his neck..  
  
When Dr. Winfield came back, she called up the results on a tablet and showed him pictures of his skeleton in black and white.  “Okay, Mr. Josten,” she said, and pointed with her pen to the easily visible fractures.  “You’ve got four fractured ribs, this one is displaced but not enough to be too much of a risk of puncturing a lung.  You also appear to have an older fracture of your collarbone that’s healing well.”  She tapped on the tablet a few times, then spun it around again.  “You’re mildly anemic, and your blood protein is a little bit low.  Since you’re also underweight, I suspect you’re not eating enough.”    
  
The bed sank a little as she sat near the foot and set the tablet down.  “Mr. Josten,” she said quietly.  “I have some concerns about your welfare.  The fractures that you’ve sustained to your ribs aren’t typical of a fall off a bike, and the collarbone fracture is at least two months old.”  _That’s about right_ , he thought.  “That, coupled with the scars and the fact that you’re malnourished makes me worry.”  
  
“I’m fine,” he said.  “I’m just really accident prone.”  If picking fights with people twice his size could be called an accident.  
  
“Well, if that’s true then I’m concerned you may have some sort of underlying illness,” she said. “A healthy twenty year old man should not be breaking bones this easily, and shouldn’t be anemic.”  
  
He never should have come here.  He thought of his mother, digging harsh fingers into his arm, dragging him away from strangers too interested in him; of those same fingers stitching him up.  She would be beyond furious, but then, six hours ago he’d been on the verge of throwing her sacrifice away.  
  
When a minute passed and he hadn’t replied, Dr. Winfield said gently, “Is everything okay at home?  Do you live with your parents?”  
  
He had to say something.  “My parents are dead.”  
  
“I’m sorry to hear that.  A girlfriend, then?  Or boyfriend?”  
  
“I, uh, I live alone.  Look, I appreciate your concern, but I just want something to make my ribs hurt less.”  
  
Sighing, the doctor typed some things into her tablet then got up to leave.  “Wait here, the prescription will be sent through to the hospital pharmacy.”    
  
While he waited, a nurse appeared to bind his ribs, then another came with a tray full of food.  “Um, I don’t think this is for me,” he said.  “I’m about to leave.”  
  
“Neil Josten, right?” the nurse said, checking the tag on the tray.  He felt a twinge at the name.  It felt so _right_ , it was almost painful.  Like this was a name worth holding onto.  
  
“Yeah,” Neil said, swallowing hard.  “That’s me.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks for the comments and kudos! I know this is weird but hopefully it'll pay off in the end.


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Andrew learns more about Neil/Nathaniel, and puts his instincts to use. Neil decides to stay put, at least for a little while.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Assholes try to torture a kitten, but Neil intervenes. I think that's it for warnings. Thanks as always to @tntwme for the beta.

Andrew would never admit to feeling overwhelmed, but he was overwhelmed.  
  
“How many angels do you have working this program?” he asked, after the Archangel had finished her well-rehearsed spiel.    
  
“Several thousand,” she said with pride.    
  
“Several thousand.  To help eight billion people.”  
  
“Not everyone needs our help, and most who do only need it here or there.”  
  
Andrew snorted.  “Is this where you tell me that whoever I’m going to help is at a crossroad, and I need to help them pick the correct path?”  
  
The Archangel smiled.  “That would be overly simplistic, don’t you think?” she asked.  “Life is little more than a series of crossroads.  Sometimes the path is so obvious you don’t even glance at the other options.  Other times there are so many choices and all the paths are so dark and full of thorns that you can’t see where any of them may lead.  Many times the path towards light is the hardest one of all.  No,” she said, shaking her head, “our job is not so much to help them to pick a path, but to find the strength and desire to keep going.  This is why we are redesigning the program, you see.  Because knowing the right path and being able to walk it are two very different things.  You know that better than most.”  
  
Damn her.  Or maybe that was impossible, given the whole archangel thing.  Well then, fuck her.  Fuck all of them, for knowing how horrible and painful and vital and valuable living was, and not being able to fix it.  Then he remembered Kevin, frustrated and flailing, desperate to keep his guy alive.  Sighing, he gestured to the screens that surrounded them.  
  
“So, what’s my assignment then?”  
  
She cocked her head and studied him.  “You have already begun.”  
  
Andrew blinked at her.  “Wait, suicidal guy?  No.”  He shook his head.  “No, no, no, that guy’s Kevin’s problem.”  
  
“Kevin has been…reassigned.  There is a depressed Frenchman who should suit him better.”    
  
“I am not dealing with that guy.”    
  
“I do not recall giving you a choice, if you wish to participate.  You already changed his course.  Thanks to your involvement, he has selected his final name.”  
  
“Neil Josten,” Andrew said, thinking of the license and passport he had found.    
  
The Archangel nodded and held out the small screen.  “He will not be an easy first assignment, but he will need your strength if he is to survive.”  
  
Fuck.  All Andrew knew how to do was endure the unendurable, and he’d done a piss-poor job of that.  But he took the screen and another data dump of images flashed into his head: more pain, more blood, more terror.  Running, running, running.  And a doctor, bent over him, worried, while he lied through his teeth.  “This doctor one of yours?” he asked.  
  
“Not yet,” she replied.  He blinked, and found himself outside a dark house watching an exhausted Neil Josten picking the lock.  
  
A breeze scattered the dead leaves that had collected against the empty house, blowing one right through Andrew.  It was an odd sensation, not painful, almost ticklish; he looked down and realized he couldn’t see himself.  _You can will yourself to be corporeal if you need to_ , came the Archangel’s voice in his head.  _You can take any human form you wish.  Only your eyes cannot change_.  
  
_Why am I here?_  
  
_To observe.  You need to know him better to best figure out how to help him._  
  
_I thought I knew everything about him already_.  He wondered if sarcasm could be transmitted this way, or if angels even recognized it.  
  
_Knowing what happened to him and knowing him are different things.  Watch.  Wait._  
  
Extending his middle finger at the sky, he drifted through a window and floated around the house.  It smelled musty, un-lived-in, with a thin coating of dust on everything.  Josten lowered himself carefully onto the floral couch that clearly belonged to someone’s grandmother and draped an arm over his eyes.  “Fuck,” Josten muttered quietly.  “Now what do I do.”  
  
Andrew watched as Josten tossed and turned fitfully on the couch for a while, then sat up, popped a pill dry, and finally fell asleep.  Even asleep his face was lined with pain and exhaustion, and Andrew felt the uncomfortable tug of recognition below his sternum.  After an hour he decided Josten was out for the count, and left to explore the area.  
  
It was a mid-sized American town out of central casting, complete with a town square, dusty sidewalks, and a park that was deserted aside from a homeless woman sleeping under a tree and a couple of teenagers getting high.  A few blocks away was a police station, and he entered and floated around watching the dispatcher drink coffee.  When she departed for the bathroom, he took her place and made his finger tips solid enough to pull up the missing persons database.  
  
He couldn’t search Neil Josten—that was clearly an alias.  He thought for a moment then entered _Nathaniel; Male; Caucasian; age range 18-22_.  No hits.  Tried _Neil_ with the same result.  Expanded his age range.  Nothing.  He was glaring at the computer in frustration when he heard soles on linoleum and quickly clicked out of the database.  He stood just in time for the dispatcher to pass through him to sit in her chair.  She shivered and frowned up at the vent in the ceiling while he forced himself not to do the icky dance at the sensation.  
  
There were a million reasons why Josten might not be in the database.  Wrong name, wrong age, never reported; but for some reason it felt ominous.  Like the man had been deleted on purpose.  
  
It was still dark out so he made his way to the public library.  Pulling up the internet, he stared at the blank screen and flipped through the massive amount of information that had been dumped into his brain.  A name came to him and he entered it into the search engine.  _Wesninski_.  
  
A Wikipedia entry was the first one that popped up.  Nathan Wesninski, with a photograph that was clearly the man who had been mowed down in the memory.  _The Butcher of Baltimore_.  Andrew snorted; nice nickname.  He scanned the entry: dead at the age of forty-nine; head of a gang that ran drugs and illegal arms.  Suspected of the murders of dozens of people including his wife, Mary Hatford; her face was familiar too.  One child, a son.  There was a death date under him too, the same as the father’s.  
  
It was him, though, it had to be.  Josten had the same piercing blue eyes and fine bone structure, though his face was kinder, his mouth lacking the cruelness of Wesninski’s.  Once again he got that prickly feeling.  _Do you always assign us fucking mysteries to solve?_ he asked silently.    
  
No reply came.  He glanced back at the dates, and realized they were more than two years after his own last remembered day.  He checked the corner of the screen where the date and time was displayed.  “Fuck,” he muttered.  Five years?  He’d lost five fucking years in the Indecision?  Five years of terrible elevator music and bad lighting?  
  
Grinding his teeth, he wiped the browser history, and made his way back to the house Josten was squatting in.  The couch cushions were flattened in the shape of a human but there was no sign of Josten, and Andrew cursed himself roundly for a moment before he spotted the duffel bag lying untouched on the floor.  The toilet flushed, and Josten made his way back to the couch on unsteady feet and grabbed his bag.  
  
He sorted through it carefully and he sat back, gripping the binder in shaking hands.  Andrew watched the way he flipped through it, mechanically, almost obsessively.   He counted the hidden money, checked the sheets of numbers and the maps, and finally tucked the binder carefully away.  Slowly his trembling stopped, and he counted quietly in English and then, to Andrew’s surprise, in German before finally falling back asleep.  
  
*****  
  
Neil slept better than he had in months, the consequence of which was waking up more fuzzy-headed than usual.  It must have been the pain meds, but somehow he just felt…safe.  He wanted to fight that feeling, but it followed him throughout the day.  By evening he had decided to settle here for a couple of weeks, let his ribs heal.  The town was big enough to go unnoticed, but not so big someone could easily get to him undetected.  It was easy to blend in while he memorized the town’s layout, the shops and schools, the restaurants and bars, and the seedier areas, which Neil studiously avoided.  
  
Day five, he was returning from buying more medical tape from the pharmacy when it felt like something tugged on his sleeve.  Whipping around, there was nobody there, but then he heard it: a plaintive cry, surrounded by laughter.  He picked up a jog, ignoring the jolt of pain in his ribs, and pulled his switchblade from his pocket.    
  
Four boys were hunched over on the sidewalk.  One picked up a rock and threw it, and another plaintive cry sounded.  “Look at the stupid little thing,” another said.  “It can’t even walk properly.”  
  
“Yeah, I’ll put it out of its misery,” the rock thrower said, picking up his foot.  
  
“ _Don’t!_ ” Neil yelled, putting all his fury in his voice.  The asshole startled and overbalanced, almost falling, and then Neil burst into the circle to stand protectively over the creature—a kitten—in the center.  Though the boys were all several years younger than him, they were all bigger; they still cringed back reflexively.  “Get the fuck away from it, you assholes.”  
  
The first guy recovered his composure the fastest and stepped towards Neil, fist clenched.  “What, you think you’re going to do something about it?”  
  
Neil looked him up and down slowly.  “Yeah, jackass, I do.”  The guy took another step and Neil pressed the button on his blade.  The snick of it had all the boys freezing.  “What kind of sick fucks are you, anyway?” he asked conversationally.  “Torturing an innocent animal.  Are your dicks really that small that that’s what you have to do to feel better about yourselves?”    
  
Anger flared in their faces, and two of them exchanged looks.  Neil flipped his switchblade casually through his fingers, then tossed it and caught it in an easy motion.  He let his duffel slide down his arm and wrapped the strap around his free hand, ready to use it as a secondary weapon.  The boys thought twice about taking on a crazy guy with a knife and turned away, flipping him off and cursing as they went.    
  
As soon as he was sure they were gone he put his blade away and carefully scooped up the kitten.  One if its hind legs was broken, and one eye swollen shut.  “Now what do I do with you?” Neil asked it, gently rubbing its little cheek.  It blinked at him with its one good eye, still blue with youth, and started purring.    
  
There was another imaginary tug on his sleeve and he turned.  A lady was walking a fancy dog a block away, and he headed to intercept her.  “Excuse me,” he said, putting on his nicest smile.  “I just found this kitten and it appears to be injured.  Do you know if there’s a vet clinic nearby?”  
  
“Oh, honey, that poor little thing!” the lady cooed.  “Yes, of course.  Bella here goes to the best vet in town.”  She gave him directions and he thanked her.  “Good luck!” she called after him.  
  
The vet clinic agreed to take care of the kitten and he took himself back to the house, stopping to pick up some more ramen, bananas, and bread on the way.  It was nearly dark when he got back and he slipped unseen through the side door.  His stomach was aching with hunger, but he found himself curled up on the floor, unable to control the sobs wracking his body, and he didn’t even know why.  
  
Maybe it was the fact that casual cruelty lay around every corner.  Or the knowledge that if he had been just thirty seconds later, he would have been too late.  It was strange; every time before, he’d felt like something was trying to hold him back from fights like these.  His better judgment, no doubt, though in the end he rarely listened to it.  But this time, it had felt like something was egging him on, and that something may well have made the difference in the kitten living or dying.  A fierce part of him liked it.  
  
After a few minutes he got himself under control.  Wrapping one arm carefully around his torso, he sat up and leaned against the wall, taking shaky breaths as deeply as his ribs would allow.  He couldn’t recall the last time he had really cried; it was strange, how empty he felt now. It wasn’t a bad empty; just…clean.  He could have marveled at the lightness.  
  
*****  
  
Andrew drifted backwards through the wall of the house.  It felt wrong, somehow, to watch Josten vulnerable like this; like he was taking something private from him.  He was startled to find himself back in the room of the screens instead of outside.  Spinning around, he saw only the Archangel, working at the desk.  
  
“You have not checked in,” she said, not looking up from the papers.  
  
He snorted.  “As if you don’t already know what is happening.”  
  
“Nevertheless,” she replied, “it is customary for all members of the GAP to check in regularly.  That way any questions you have may be answered.”  
  
He walked over to the wall and watched a few of the screens.  A young girl wrapped her arms around a grinning golden retriever.  A woman opened a bottle of wine.  A desperate-looking man started to turn down an alley, then took a deep breath and walked past it instead.  Andrew thought he saw a flash of someone next to him, someone short and blond, and he wondered if that was Aaron’s charge.  His eyes drifted towards _his_ screen.  Josten was heating water, a packet of ramen open next to him.  There was something new in his face, and he studied him for a moment, unable to recognize it.  
  
“Why is my guy apparently a ghost?” he asked abruptly.  
  
“Pardon?”  
  
“Josten. Or whatever his name is.  According to all the records I’ve searched, he died three years ago.”  
  
“I do not see why that is a concern.”  
  
“Because we know he’s on the run from something, or someone, and given that everybody thinks he’s dead it would be nice to know what that is.”  
  
“I know only what the screens have shown us,” she said with infuriating calm.  
  
“Aren’t you guys supposed to be omniscient or omnipotent or omni-something-actually-fucking-useful?”  
  
“Coach can see into the souls of humans, Andrew.  Could he force them to do his will?  Perhaps; but does that mean that he should?  He can see into their minds, but should he share their thoughts with us?  Is not free will part of what makes humans human?”  
  
“I’m not looking for an existential debate here, and I’m not asking Coach to read Neil’s mind for me or make him do something.  I just need to know why the hell he’s supposed to have died the night his father bit the dust.”  
  
She spread her hands.  “I do not know why.”  
  
Fury coursed through him, and he slammed his fist down on the table.  The screens on the walls rattled.  “Then what good are you?”  
  
A throat cleared behind him, and he wheeled around to see Coach glaring at him with his arms folded across his chest, the flames flaring redder than they had been before.  “You are missing the point, Minyard,” he said.  Andrew crossed his own arms and leaned against the desk, looking up at him.  “I assigned Neil to you because I thought you had a handle on what he needed.  Fixating on unimportant details will only serve to distract you from the real threat to him.”  
  
“I know you’re not going to say himself.”  
  
Coach’s mouth twitched in what might’ve been a smile.  “Stop worrying about everything else and focus on him.”  He started to fade out, then firmed up again.  “Nice work with the kitten, by the way.”    
  
Andrew stared at the spot where he had disappeared for a moment, then glanced at the Archangel.  “I’m not going to apologize.”  
  
“I didn’t expect you to,” she retorted.  Before she could say anything else, the door opened and Nicky, Kevin, Allison, and Matt tumbled in.    
  
“Hey, man!” Nicky said brightly, holding his hand up as if expecting a high-five.  Andrew looked at him, unsmiling, and Nicky let his hand drop.  “Cute kitten your guy rescued.  Hey, Dan,” he said, turning to the Archangel, and Andrew felt an odd twist in his gut realizing she had a name and it was not any of the ones he had learned on Earth.  “Can we keep it if it dies?”  
  
“Fuck you,” Andrew scoffed.  “It’s not going to die.”  
  
The weight of Kevin’s disapproving glare bored into the side of his head, and he rolled his eyes in that direction.  “You’re an idiot,” Kevin fumed.  “You’re going to undo all the work I’ve done.   That’s twice you’ve led him right into danger.”  
  
“Have you actually met Neil?” Andrew asked.  “He’s going to throw himself into shit no matter what, might as well give him a head start.  Notice he didn’t actually get damaged this time.”  
  
They glared at each other for a while.  Kevin loomed over him, clearly expecting Andrew to quail, and seeming surprised when he didn’t.  The Archangel—damn, it was weird to think of her as Dan—eventually broke the tense silence.  “Kevin, he is Andrew’s charge now.  How are things going with Jean?”  
  
Andrew half-listened to everyone’s reports while out of the corner of his eye he watched Neil eat his ramen then pull out his binder and flip through it.  He needed to get the man some books or something.  Find him something to do other than run.  “Look at the new guy,” somebody whispered behind him.  “I wonder if he’s going to kill his charge himself.”  
  
“Five rainbows says no.”  
  
“I’ll take that.”    
  
Andrew glared at Nicky and Matt over his shoulder; they gave him terrible approximations of innocent smiles in return.  He wondered how betting in rainbows worked, anyway.  And why Aaron wasn’t here with the rest of them.  
  
“We done here?” Dan asked briskly.    
  
Before anybody could answer, the room disappeared and he was back at the house.  Neil was digging in his duffel, a small smile on his face when he emerged.  Andrew was surprised that it was the camera he held in his hands, but he shouldn’t be, he realized.  Not with the photos he had printed to hide his most valued possessions.  Josten stared at the back of it and Andrew floated around to hover over his shoulder to watch as he flipped through the pictures.  A couple dozen photographs were on the card.  Several flowers, more exotic than the ones in the binder.  An expanse of train tracks, shot to exaggerate the perspective so they narrowed down to nothing.  The shadow of what must have been a classic American car, judging by the shape of it, outlined on dusty ground.  A closeup of some sort of cactus, the spines in sharp detail.  That was the one Neil lingered on, brushing a gentle finger over the screen.    
  
Neil turned the camera back off and pulled the battery out, jammed it into a charger then plugged it into the wall.  He tucked the camera gently back into its case and he curled back up on the couch, just the tips of his fingers resting on the camera case as he drifted back to sleep.  Andrew felt a quiet ache in his chest that he didn’t know what to name, thinking of this desperate man stopping to capture unique and lonely beauty.  He thought it might have been envy, that he could notice such things in such a world.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you all for the comments! They give me life!


	4. Chapter 4

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Neil gets a little too comfortable in his "borrowed" house. Andrew helps him out when that gets him into trouble. Shenanigans ensue.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Uhh...not much to warn about in this one. If you squint, it's almost NSFW (see end notes or HMU on Tumblr if you're concerned). Thanks as always to @tntwme for the beta!

_This town is strangely peaceful_ , Neil thought, as he studied the crumbling brick of the abandoned factory in front of him.  His camera felt almost foreign in his hands; it had been almost three months since he had shot anything.  He walked to the corner of the building and looked through his viewfinder again.  There; the lighting there was perfect, the right contrast of shadow and light.  He captured the whole edge, an irregular wave of orangey red and gray.  Moving, he zoomed out until the perspective was distorted and clicked, catching the long part of the wall so it looked nearly endless; invincible if it weren’t for the crumbling decay that could not be hidden.  Then he zoomed in until the focus was on a trio of bricks with moss on the mortar between them, tweaking the aperture and his angle until one side was in deep shadow and the other had the play of light on the irregularities.  
  
He turned to walk back when a broken window glinted, the edges sharp as knives and just as deadly.  The interior of the factory looked black and the shot was easy.  A building with jagged teeth.  Finding a bench, he sat and flipped through the pictures on the camera’s screen.  A couple stood out; a few more would have been great if he’d had editing software, but he had to make do with what the camera caught.    
  
Days landed, took root, and sprouted into weeks.  Neil blinked and the summer was two-thirds gone and his camera’s cards were full.  Despite the random visits when the realtor brought someone to look at the little house he had commandeered, it was starting to feel like a home.  He kept telling himself it was dangerous.  Kept telling himself to move, to leave, to get on one of the Greyhound buses and head north.  But his feet, like the days, seemed to have found soil on which to grow.  
  
The librarian smiled at him when he entered; he gave a small wave and ducked away as quickly as possible.  It took a few minutes to upload the pictures to his Shutterfly account and sort and crop them.  The cactus was his favorite, as he had known it would be from the second the shutter snapped all those months ago.  But the pattern of the moss on the brick surprised him.  Viewed straight on, it looked like what it was, but from a little bit of an angle it looked like a person with their arms raised.  No; it looked like an angel.  He flipped it to black and white and played a little with the light and the resemblance became even stronger.  In the end he sent just that and the cactus to Walgreens to print.  
  
He hopped the fence into the yard of “his” house and approached the side door he’d been entering through when he suddenly found himself grinding to a halt for no reason.  Listening hard, he heard nothing other than the normal sounds of the neighborhood at night; neighbors talking through their open windows; a baseball game on TV somewhere; a dog barking.  Shaking his head, he started forward, pulling his lock picks out of his pocket.  _Run, rabbit_ , a voice sounded in his ears.  Neil ran.  
  
A shout came from behind him as he vaulted the fence and skirted the yard of the house behind his.  He tore across sleepy streets and landscaped yards; a cop car appeared off to his left and he veered, circling back and ended up crossing the street behind it.  Slowing down, he slipped from shadow to shadow until he made it back into the town center, trying to look casual with his duffel flung over his shoulder.  
  
The cop somehow must have spotted him when he entered the park; he heard the acceleration of the car going to cut him off and doubled back.  An imaginary tug on his sleeve led him into the section of town where there were a few bars and clubs, and he wove his way through a handful of people singing with alcohol-induced cheer and ducked into an alley.  
  
The alley ended in a chain-link fence and there was no way around the back of the building.  The fence was climbable, but there was razor wire along the top and he didn’t know where the next alley led.  He tucked himself behind the dumpster and leaned back in the shadows of the rear access door.  Just as he finally started to breathe easier, red and white lights began reflecting off the alley walls, flickering down from where the cop car had stopped.  The lights stopped and the alley got darker, but he could still glimpse slivers of the car from around the dumpster.  Neil curled himself into a ball and waited with his heart in his throat.  
  
*****  
  
Andrew still couldn’t believe the fucking idiot hadn’t noticed the cop car parked in front of the house.  If he was going to be fair, which he had no intention of being, it would have been very difficult to see from the angle Josten was approaching, but still.  If he had turned away when Andrew first indicated, Andrew wouldn’t currently be trying to figure out how to hotwire a cop car.  
  
 _You can’t_ , sounded a voice in his head that wasn’t the Archangel’s.  He glared upwards then went back to looking underneath the steering column.  _No, seriously, if you break in there the car will lock up.  Just steal the cop’s keys_.  
  
Damnit, the voice was right.  He remembered that jackass in juvie he used to fool around with telling him not to try to hotwire anything newer than 2004.  Luckily he was not a terrible pickpocket and being invisible helped.  As did the fact that the cop was currently distracted by a drunk couple yelling at him, preventing him from seeing Josten hidden behind that dumpster.  
  
Keys in hand, he started the car, put it into gear, then fumbled around until he found the button for the lights and sirens.  Hitting both, he set the car rolling slowly down the street and ghosted through the glass.  It was amusing, watching the cop shout and tear off after his car, but his work was not done.  Bypassing the bouncer who was watching the scene unfold with a broad grin, he made his way into the club that bordered the alley.  Finding an out-of-the-way corner, he concentrated on making himself visible.  It felt kind of like what he imagined walking through jello would feel like, but it didn’t take long.  Glancing down, he saw he was even dressed in club-appropriate attire.    
  
Being dead was so fucking weird.  
  
Weaving his way through sweating, dancing bodies, he found his way to the emergency exit that opened into the alley.  The wires to the alarm were dangling loose; nevertheless, he was cautious as he cracked open the door.  When no blaring noise announced him, he pushed it the rest of the way open.    
  
Josten was sitting wedged up against the brick; the door just missed hitting him on its way open.  Andrew grabbed his arm and pulled him into the building, the door snapping closed on his yelp.  Yanking his arm free, Josten whipped around, ready to fight.  Andrew almost laughed; the guy was like a desperate puppy baring its teeth.  “Come with me,” Andrew said.    
  
“No.”  There was a faint growl in the word.  
  
“Don’t be an asshole, I’m trying to help you.”  Josten scoffed and irritation crawled up Andrew’s spine.  “Unless you want that cop out there to catch you?”  
  
Josten’s pupils flared.  “Fuck. You.”  
  
“Oh, is there a different person he’s after?  Because you’re the only one hiding behind a dumpster.”  
  
They glared at each other for a moment, then a flicker of recognition crossed Josten’s face, rapidly followed by cold panic.  “You’re that guy.”  
  
“Yes, you may remember me from such films as Interrupting Your Suicide Attempt,” Andrew said wryly.  He probably should have anticipated being recognized.  Josten backed away.  “Look, I’m not going to hurt you, I swear to God.”    
  
Evidently that was the wrong thing to say.  Josten bolted through the exit door and took off down the alley; Andrew stood in the doorway and watched as he skidded to a halt near the street and flattened himself against the wall.  Another cop car drove by a split second later.  Step by careful step, Josten backed his way down the alley until he was next to the dumpster.  
  
“You done being an idiot?” Andrew asked.  Josten glared at him then, with a glance back down the alley he stepped into the doorway.  Andrew didn’t get out of his way; they were nearly touching as Josten slipped past him.  It was strange, how different that closeness felt when he had a body.  How it sent tingles down his spine and goosebumps up his arms.  
  
The door clicked shut behind them.  “Why?” Josten asked, barely audible over the pounding music.  
  
“Why not?” Andrew challenged.  “I’ve got nothing better to do.  And I suppose you saved my life.”  Not technically, but whatever.  He watched him do the mental math of running back out into the land of razor wire and cops versus trusting Andrew enough to let him help.  It was still not calculating out into Andrew’s favor.  “You need to change your clothes,” Andrew said, trying to shift the equation.  “He’s looking for a guy in a gray shirt, that’s your most distinctive feature right now.”  
  
Josten glanced down and cursed under his breath.  Andrew turned and headed back into the crush; he could feel Josten behind him.  They made their way to the bathroom and Andrew went straight into the only empty stall, rolling his eyes when Josten balked.  “Come on, let me see what else you’ve got in that bag.”  
  
“I’m not stripping in front of you.”  
  
“Oh, for fuck’s sake.  I’ll turn my back or whatever.  But first you’ve got to prove to me you’ve got something that’ll pass.”  
  
“Jesus, are you always such an asshole?” Josten asked, nevertheless unzipping one end of his duffel and carefully pulling out a shirt.  Worn, pale blue, logo.    
  
“Nope.  Try again.”  When Josten glared at him, he made a ‘keep going’ motion with his hand.  The next shirt was a faded red; then another gray one; then a white one.  None of which would work to disappear in a club.  Andrew sighed and snagged the plain white one, then reached over his shoulder to strip his own shirt off.  
  
“Whoa, whoa,” Josten said, backing away the approximately two and a half inches the stall allowed.   
  
“None of your shirts are going to work in here, idiot.  And black is generic enough on the outside too, plus you’ll hide in shadows better.”  He tugged the white t-shirt over his head and held out the nice black one that had materialized with him.  When Josten still wouldn’t take it, he flung it at his head and turned his back to him.  There was an aggravated sigh and the rustle of clothing.  
  
“Happy now?” Josten asked, and Andrew turned around.  He absolutely was not going to appreciate the way the shirt fit Josten’s narrow body, or the contrast of the black with his clear blue eyes.  
  
“It’ll do,” he said instead.  “At least you won’t stand out like a sore thumb.  You should get a backpack, though.  It’ll blend in better than that monstrosity.”  
  
Josten flipped him off.  “Are you going to get out of my fucking way now?”  
  
Andrew tapped two fingers to his forehead in a salute.  “As you wish, princess.”  He opened the stall door and bowed Josten out.  His eyes drifted to Josten’s ass as he followed him out of the bathroom; it was distracting enough even in his baggy jeans that he almost ran into him when he stopped abruptly.  
  
Peering over Josten’s shoulder he saw the problem: two cops now, the original idiot and a middle-aged woman.  She looked a bit less like someone who would use their lights when pursuing a subject who was on foot and a bit more like someone who might actually notice a guy with a duffel in a nightclub.  Andrew slid around Josten’s frozen form, put a hand on his chest, and pushed.  
  
To his surprise, Josten yielded easily, letting Andrew back him into the bathroom and into their abandoned stall.  “Don’t you think they’ll notice two sets of legs in here?” Josten hissed in his ear.  
  
“That’s kind of the idea, Buttercup,” Andrew said.  
  
“What the fuck?  Why do you keep—”  
  
Andrew cut him off with a hand over his mouth just as the door crashed open.  He rose on tiptoes to whisper in Josten’s ear, “Moan,” then dropped to his knees.  Josten jolted in surprise and looked down at him with wide eyes while the cop’s brash voice echoed in the tiled room.  Andrew just knelt there, unmoving, not touching him.  When Josten didn’t make a noise, Andrew rolled his eyes and mimed a blow job.  The idiot still just stared.  “Moan,” Andrew mouthed silently, and Josten blinked and then did a pathetic attempt at a breathy moan.  Licking his lips, he tried again, a little more convincingly.    
  
Andrew tamped down the desire to unzip Josten’s pants and make him moan for real and listened while the pig asked the various clubbers if they’d seen a boy in a gray shirt.  He gave Josten a smug look when they all answered “no.”  The idiot replied by flipping him off again while giving another, deeper moan.  Andrew bit the inside of his cheek until he tasted blood.  This pretty jackass was going to be the death of him.  Figuratively, of course.  
  
There was a sharp rap on the stall door, then the cop’s weary voice.  “Police officer.  Come out of the stall, please.”  
  
Andrew got to his feet and leaned in close to Josten’s ear, breathing, “Wait until both officers are distracted.”  Then he nudged Josten aside and slipped out, making a show of wiping his mouth.    
  
The officer looked vaguely surprised.  “Your friend, too,” he said.  
  
Andrew shrugged, aware that several patrons were watching.  “If he comes out now, it won’t be his hands that are up, Ossifer,” he said.  “Give him a minute, you cut us a bit short.”  
  
Surprise turned to revulsion.  “This is a public place.  I could arrest you for indecency.”  
  
“It’s a fucking nightclub, Ossifer.”  He wondered how long it would take for the officer to recognize his mispronunciation.  “If you’re going to go after everyone who’s here to get off,  you’re going to be arresting half the people and closing the damn thing down.”  A couple of guys in mesh shirts standing near the sinks snickered.  “Or are you just threatening me because I’m gay?”  
  
The officer sputtered while he glanced around, taking in the suddenly hostile faces of the men around him.  Nothing better than a good offense-as-defense maneuver.  “That’s not what this is about,” the pig stammered.    
  
“No, it’s about some poor kid you’re hunting down, from what I gather.  What’d he do, steal your donuts or something?  Or is he gay too?”  He pushed past the cop and headed for the door.  
  
“Stop.”   
  
Andrew ignored him and darted through the door, counting on the cop following him.  A heavy hand landed on his shoulder a few seconds later and he would have smiled if the feeling didn’t make his skin crawl.  Whipping around, he snapped, “Get your hands off me!”    
  
Nearby dancers turned to look at his strident tone.  Andrew backed away from the cop, hands up.  “I haven’t done anything wrong!” he shouted.  A bunch more people stopped to watch, forming a circle around Andrew and the cop.    
  
The cop was furious, judging by his expression and the hand he had on his nightstick.  “C’mon, kid, enough of this.”  
  
Someone was filming with their phone; there was muttering from the clubbers that surrounded them.  The music cut out, leaving Andrew’s ears ringing with the sudden quiet.  “Enough of what?” he asked.  “I just came to enjoy myself, I haven’t done anything illegal, and you’re harassing me.”  Out of the corner of his eye Andrew saw the female cop approaching.  “What, are you going to arrest me for making a donut joke?” he said, once she came into earshot.    
  
Josten appeared in his peripheral vision, skirting the hubbub like a feral cat.  “Kid,” the officer said, “I just want to ask you some questions.”  
  
“And I don’t have to answer them.  I know my rights, Ossifer.”   
  
Finally, finally the cop caught on.  “How much have you had to drink, son?”  
  
“Nothing,” Andrew said, honestly answering that question for the first time ever.  
  
The woman stepped in, the male officer sighing with relief.  “Are you willing to do a sobriety test?”  
  
“I’ll do a sobriety test, I’ll take a breathalyzer, I’ll piss in a fucking cup if that’s what you want,” Andrew said.  “As long as he admits to harassing me for my sexuality.”  
  
There was an explosion of noise around him, clubbers jeering at the cops, the male officer arguing, the female officer trying to shout above the noise.  Andrew crossed his arms and watched, warm amusement in his gut, as Josten slipped unnoticed out the door.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> After reading this @tntwme suggested that fake blowjobs become a new trope, and I am heartily in favor.
> 
> Thanks as always for all comments and kudos! They always help encourage faster writing!


	5. Chapter 5

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Neil has to hit the road again, and Andrew meets the angel who advised him about the cop car.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I don't think there are any warnings for this chapter. As always, thanks to @tntwme for the beta!

It sucked to be back to sleeping on the ground, but at least his ribs had healed enough to make it bearable.  There was a convenient clump of trees not far from the truck stop, and Neil made himself a nest in the pine needles and settled in.  The hum of traffic from the highway mingled with the rustling of wind through the trees.  Neil had fallen asleep to similar music more times than he could count, but tonight it had no power to soothe.  
  
He still felt like he had drunk six cups of coffee.  Usually that jittery buzz dissipated as soon as he was hidden, and he didn’t know why it was still clinging to the inside of his skin.  Maybe because he didn’t know the fate of the guy with the shirt, if he was currently being booked in at the police station or walking free.  Or maybe it was the way that he had looked through Neil when he had calmly referenced that moment on the bridge.  It felt as if he knew exactly who Neil was—every name, every lie, every scar—and the feeling was enough to make bile crawl up Neil’s throat.  
  
He couldn’t be known.  His mother had beaten that into him with harsh words and harsher fists.  To be known was to be dead.  But the past three years had taught him that to be unknown by anyone was a different sort of death; not that of the body, but a slow fading of the self that was no less terminal.  He couldn’t be known, but he wondered, lying there under the trees, if maybe he wanted to be.    
  
Not by everybody.  No, that prospect was terrifying.  But maybe by somebody.  He thought of the effortless way the guy had baited the cop, had pulled attention away from him with humor and calculated antagonism, had thrown himself into a fray of his own making just to help Neil get away.  Neil didn’t understand why the man had done it, after already by his own admission throwing himself into the river to keep Neil from doing the same.    
  
It had seemed easier, when his mother was still alive.  At least with her by his side he could pretend someone knew him.  After all, she had given birth to him, had raised him, had spent the last seven years of her life running with him.  But she had never noticed the way his eyes were drawn to the play of shadow and light, the tiny details of a flower, the filigree of frost on a dead leaf.  To her, he was just wasting time.  Being slow.  The day after she died, he had stumbled into an electronics store, the reek of smoke still in his nostrils, and blown over a thousand dollars on a camera and a good lens.  Pathetic as it was, he had been less lonely with the camera in his hands than for the previous seven years.  
  
As he finally started to drift off, he wondered when he would next let himself feel that fragile weight in his hands.  And what hazel eyes would look like lit by pale morning sun.  
  
*****  
  
Andrew was unsurprised when he strolled out of the club after blowing a zero on the breathalyzer and ended up walking directly into the room full of screens.  There was an unfamiliar angel there, with pastel rainbow wings, who scanned him in cold appraisal before giving him a warm smile.  The shift was slightly unsettling, and he found himself unable to look away from her.  
  
“Thank you for listening,” she said, and he recognized her voice as the one from the cop car.    
  
He gave a short nod.  “I should have known.”  
  
She laughed.  “Car theft was never your specialty,” she said.  He wondered how she knew.  The Archangel—Dan—had implied he’d had a guardian angel once, but he’d assumed they had probably been drunk off their ass the whole time.    
  
“Sometimes people slip through the cracks,” she murmured, the cadence of her voice like an unfelt wind.  The flicker of darkness in her eyes told him that she was speaking from personal experience.  “As you apparently pointed out to the Archangel, there are way too few of us for the problems down below.  That’s why I’m here.  So people like you and I won’t have to keep suffering.”  
  
Andrew snorted.  “It’ll never change.  Not until we blow up the planet, or humanity goes extinct.  Or the apocalypse, if there really will be such a thing.”  
  
The angel inclined her head.  “Maybe humanity’s predilection for evil will not change,” she mused, “but if we can change things, even for just one person?  Isn’t that enough?”  
  
“Is it enough for you?” he challenged.  “Saving the one at the expense of many?”  
  
She hummed.  “I like to think so.  I like to think that each life saved is valuable in its own right.”  
  
“You don’t seem like someone into self-delusion.”  
  
“Do you think you’ve made a difference with your charge?” she asked.  
  
“He’s still breathing and he’s not in jail, but I’m not honestly sure I’ve done him any favors.”  
  
“Perhaps not, but he did save that kitten.  Had you not saved him, he would not have been there, and an innocent animal would have been tortured to death.”  
  
He ignored the knot that tightened in his chest at that thought.  “It’s a fucking cat.  Who cares?  It doesn’t matter.”  
  
“Now, Andrew,” she reproved, “if you believe that why did you alert him to it?”  
  
“The guy’s a sucker for helpless victims.  He would’ve probably done something stupid if he’d gotten there too late.”  
  
“He didn’t have to happen upon it at all.  You could have easily drawn his attention elsewhere, and he never would have known.”  
  
Fuck her.  “Where’s the Archangel, anyway?” he asked.  
  
“Elsewhere,” she said, with a knowing smile.  “You get to talk to me today.”  Seriously.  Fuck. Her.  
  
“How did you die?” he challenged.  “Since you clearly know all about me.”  
  
“Shot in the head by the leader of my gang,” she answered.  “In retaliation for killing one of his men.”    
  
Hmm.  He looked at her with fresh eyes, searching the layers in her smile for lies.  Andrew always appeared calm, but this angel actually was calm.  Settled in herself in a way he had never imagined possible.  “What is this, some sort of penance for you?” he asked.  
  
She looked amused.  “Is that such a horrible concept to you?  No, this is not penance in the way you mean it.  I do not regret killing that man, as by doing so I prevented a lot of other girls from being harmed by him.”  She gestured with her arm, encompassing the mass of screens on the wall.  “That does not mean that I do not wish to prevent the unnecessary suffering of others though.  Consider it empathy, more than penance.”  
  
Andrew had never been accused of having empathy in his life, but remembering Josten sobbing on the floor after the kitten incident, he understood what she meant.  Perhaps he required death to find it.  Or perhaps, he realized, thinking of the first time he had seen Aaron’s battered face and track marks, he just needed death to know what to call it.  
  
“Why am I here again?”  
  
“We need to work on you controlling your appearance.  If you keep appearing in his life with your Earth-look that will be a problem.”  
  
“It helped me tonight.”  
  
“Perhaps,” she said, laughing.  “I must say your method was effective, if unconventional.”  She moved to the door and opened it, waiting for him.    
  
His eyes drifted to Josten’s screen.  The idiot was sleeping on his duffel in what looked like some sort of forest that Andrew hadn’t even known existed near the town.  He looked vulnerable, and younger than he was.  Little more than a kid, really.    
  
“You can bring it with us,” the angel said.  Andrew snagged the screen and followed.  
  
They stopped when Josten woke up.  The angel, who had introduced herself as Renee, had tried every trick she could think of, but Andrew had still been unable to appear as anything other than himself.  No amount of meditation or visualization made a difference.    
  
“It’s okay,” Renee said.  “The next time he’s relatively safe we’ll have you come back.  Dan or Coach should be able to help.  It’s like any skill, it comes naturally for some and is harder for others.”  
  
He didn’t ask what happens if I can’t.  If they would take him off of Josten and assign him somewhere else, or just strip him of his consciousness and dump him in Hades world.  He just nodded and disappeared back down to Earth.  
  
*****  
  
Neil had never really liked buses, but when you wanted to cover large distances it was far more effective than hitchhiking.  He zigged and zagged his way across the country, hopping from bus to bus, spending some nights on the bus, some in all-night diners, some sleeping in parks.  Once he hit Nashville, he decided to stay for a while.  The city was full of people in their twenties just getting by, mixed with older people who could never imagine living anywhere else and teenagers who wanted nothing more than to leave.  It was easy to lose himself among aspiring musicians and college students.  Almost too easy.  
  
A voice in his head kept nagging him to use some of his money to rent a cheap apartment, but he couldn’t bring himself to do it.  As much as he liked being Neil Josten, eventually he would need to change identities again.  He had burned through the four he had purchased after his mother’s death, and they didn’t come cheap.  Nashville was full of little parks and nooks where he could snatch a few hours’ sleep, and it wasn’t cold.  Yet.  
  
After a week studying the college students around him, he sucked it up and took the advice of the guy from the club.  It was amazing, how easy it was to find a backpack that could hold all of his stuff.  Once everything was neatly tucked into it in the order he required, he looked at the pathetic strip of worn nylon lying at his feet for a long moment.  Picking it up, he went to drop it into a trash can but found himself tucking it into an unused pocket in his pack instead.  _Just in case_ , he told himself; though in case of what, he had no clue.  
  
Sneaking into the university gyms was effortless with the backpack, he just had to find a group of students entering and follow.  One morning, changing in one of the bathroom stalls, he dug the black shirt Club Guy had given him out of his backpack and started to laugh.  The guy might have been crazy, but he certainly wasn’t hurting for balls.  Or brains.  Neil found himself wishing that he would see him again.  It was never going to happen, of course; running into him twice was some sort of perverse miracle, a third time was impossible.  He pulled the shirt on.  It had been washed with the rest of his clothes, so he knew the faint smoky club smell was all in his head, but he tugged the fabric up to his nose and inhaled anyway.  
  
Days slipped by in the slow, syrupy trudge of survival.  The sweetness of summer air began to morph into the faint bite of fall.  Neil blinked one day and realized the leaves were changing and he couldn’t remember the last time he’d touched his camera.   He watched a man on a park bench, calloused fingers picking at the strings of a gleaming guitar, the light perfect, the notes reverberating in the air around him, and felt nothing.  
  
The voice in his head got more strident about finding an apartment.  But this city was too full of music, of life, of vibrant colors and sound.  He got on a bus instead.  
  
The next city was warmer and more hostile.  There were dividers on the benches in the parks and spikes on the window ledges in front of businesses.  A couple of drunks found him asleep under a bush and threw rocks at him, calling him white trash and whatever other insults they could dredge up.  They did not pursue him when he got quietly to his feet and found his way out of town.  
  
He couldn’t keep heading east so he went north instead.  The air got colder, the color on the trees brighter.  His camera sat lonely in its case.  The next city didn’t feel right, nor the next.  He stayed a week or two, then found himself staring at the bus schedules.  When he had been with his mother, they would spend months in each place, long enough that he remembered over a dozen cities around the world still with the kind of fondness most reserved for _home_.  But that had been with a roof over his head and electricity, regular meals and homeschooling books, her back warm and solid against his.  Now he knew nothing but how to keep moving, her last words echoing in his head.  _Don’t look back, don’t slow down, don’t trust anyone.  Be anyone but yourself, and don’t be anyone for too long_.  
  
He bought another bus ticket.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you all for the comments and support! They mean the world! HMU on my Tumblr @fuzzballsheltiepants anytime.


	6. Chapter 6

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Andrew continues to practice taking other forms, with a little help. Neil makes his way back west, and the homelessness continues to take its toll.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Neil's depression hits another low point; HMU on Tumblr if you have more questions. And, uh, sorry about the ending of this one.

One benefit of being dead was at least Andrew didn’t need to sleep.  He spent nights practicing materializing while Neil was sacked out, but it didn’t make a difference.  No matter how much he tried, he always appeared the same: short, stocky, blond.  Even all his scars were intact, familiar ridges up and down his forearms.    
  
He went back to the screen room over and over.  Renee tried to help, as did Matt and Nicky.  Allison studied her fingernails and looked superior, but she was easy to ignore.  Kevin’s condescension was enough to drive Andrew to murder, if only it had been possible to kill someone already dead.  Then the Archangel stepped in.    
  
She was stern but patient.  Eventually she took him to the middle of an empty cornfield, a hundred miles from Josten, and turned him herself.  He held onto the form of the middle-aged woman for a while, until his thoughts drifted to Josten and his skin and bones bubbled and melted and he changed back into himself.  Only the floral dress remained unaltered.  
  
They tried it again and again, night after night, until he could shift himself, but he could never maintain it.  “Fuck it,” he finally said, sitting down on a rock in the forest she had selected one night.  He picked moodily at his Juicy sweatpants, removing bits of newly fallen leaves.  Why the clothes he shifted into always remained when he returned to his Earth-body, he wasn’t sure.  “I’ll just stay invisible.”  
  
“You know that won’t work,” Dan said.  “You need to be able to interact with him, or with other people around him.”  
  
“It’s not like he even listens to reason.  He could have stayed in Nashville, no problem, but of course he wouldn’t.”  
  
She smiled, power radiating through her.  “Perhaps now you understand Kevin’s frustration with him.”  
  
He refused to accept that Kevin might have had a point.  Or any of the assholes, really.  He was tired of dealing with whichever combination of them were whining in the screen room at any given moment.  Only Renee was actually tolerable, though he had to admit the Archangel wasn’t so bad.  Getting his feet under him with a sigh, he pictured again the brown-haired girl and grimaced at the painless stretch that molded his body like play-doh.  This version of him fit into the sweatpants much better than his normal body did.  He wandered around for a while, getting used to the feel of the different proportions.    
  
If he was being honest with himself, he kind of hated it.  He had never felt comfortable in his own body in life, but putting himself into these others made him long for it.  It might have been scarred, it might have worn its trauma too obviously, it might have been vulnerable too many times, but it was his.  He had made it strong, he had taught it how to fight, how to win, how to work through pain to show no mercy.  This body was unmarked by survival; all the imagined bodies were.  It felt like a lie, or a betrayal.  
  
Andrew couldn’t help but wonder if this was part of why he had so much trouble.  He wadded the feeling up and shoved it deep.  When Dan asked if he was ready to return to Josten, he nodded; but before she could place him there the familiar drag crept over him.    
  
She hummed as she studied him, standing there in his once again too-big girl’s sweats.  “Let’s go back,” she said.  “I’d like to talk to Coach.  It may be that we need to choose a specific type of body for you.”  
  
Andrew didn’t want to be dragged back to the screen room like a recalcitrant puppy, but he had little choice.  They had only been there for a few seconds when the door burst open and Nicky bounded in, followed by Matt.  “Andrew!” Nicky exclaimed.  “Your little dude still alive?”  
  
He asked that every. freaking. time.  Andrew still couldn’t tell if it was supposed to be a dick joke.  He bit back once again on the inappropriate retort in favor of turning his attention back to the Archangel.  Nicky and Matt gave their updates then hung around, looking at the screens.  Well, Nicky watched the screens while Matt stared longingly at the Archangel while she pretended to ignore him.  Andrew wondered if she was even aware of the slight smile lifting the corners of her lips.  
  
Why did all this bullshit not end with death?  Maybe if it had he wouldn’t keep picturing Josten’s ice-blue eyes staring down at him and the soft pleasant rasp of his voice.  
  
Coach appeared, gruffly greeting the lot of them before turning to Andrew.  He pointed at his feet and Andrew stepped in front of him.  Andrew blinked, and disappeared.  
  
He found himself in an alley in the city Josten had landed in the day before.  Everything around him looked small, and looking down he realized he was over six feet tall.  Tattoos wound around his arms and he was dressed like a biker.  He looked up.  “What the fuck, Coach?”  
  
 _Let’s see if your soul accepts this body better_.  
  
It felt particularly weird walking through the streets at twice his normal size.  He kept tripping over curbs and cracks in the sidewalk; if anyone were around to watch at three a.m. he’d probably have looked drunk.  But he didn’t feel that aggravating push-pull sensation he usually did.    
  
Josten had found himself a bench in a little-used section of the park.  Andrew paused several yards away and leaned against a tree, trying to figure out why he looked so lumpy.  Then he realized the fool had put on most of his clothes as a ward against the cold.  Fucking idiot.  Who carried around certificates for a quarter of a million dollars in a binder in their backpack and lived on the streets?  
  
Just as he started to feel smug about retaining his oversized body, he felt it start to shrink.  Cursing in whispers, he tried to cling to the feel of the bigger frame, the bulgier muscles, but there was nothing he could do.  In a couple of seconds he was standing in oversized biker clothes, the pants pooling around his feet and sagging dangerously low on his hips.  He shook his hands out of the sleeves and grabbed onto the waistband, then glared at the sky.  The wind sighed past in Coach’s voice as Earth disappeared.  
  
*****  
  
Neil was starting to think he was going insane.  He would blink awake, night after night, certain that someone was watching him, only to see a faint glimmer in the darkness and no sign of life anywhere.  It didn’t seem to matter where he slept, the invisible eyes always found him.  They felt benevolent, at least; more like they were watching over him.  A part of him wondered if it was his mother, but he had never really believed in any sort of afterlife.  Wishing and believing were two different things.  
  
He kept getting the urge to pick a town and settle down, try to make a home for himself.  Not just for a few weeks, or a few months, but for real.  _You can do it_ , that voice in his head kept murmuring.  _Nobody is after you.  You can be safe, you can be still_.  
  
Even though he knew the voice spoke true, his mother’s always overrode it.  _Don’t stop running_.  It didn’t matter that he knew his father was dead, that he had been there when the bullets had torn Nathan Wesninski’s chest apart.  _Don’t stop running_.  Even the mere thought of signing the lease on an apartment brought back the ghost of feminine hands ripping at his hair, slapping his cheek, again and again and again.    
  
It didn’t help that he wasn’t sure if his fake paperwork would hold up to scrutiny, allow him to get a job, pay taxes, blend in.  He was pretty certain his social security number had been stolen off a dead man, and alerting the authorities to his presence could not possibly end well.  Nathaniel Wesninski was presumed dead; he had left enough blood behind in his father’s basement for the FBI to have been more than happy to declare him such.  
  
Slowly he worked his way back west.  He needed to head south, to find somewhere warm and dry to spend the winter.  Not Texas; that had not gone well last time, even if he had been inexplicably helped by Club Guy.  Maybe New Mexico, or Arizona.  He would never go back to California, even if the Lost Coast was nearly eight hundred miles north of the southern border.  The one time he had tried going back, he had smelled blood and burning flesh until he crossed into Nevada.    
  
The one thing about the vast plains in the center of the U.S. was that you could see pretty much anything coming from miles away.  As the bus approached its next stop, the buildings almost looked to be sprouting out of the surrounding cornfields like the high-speed movie of a plant growing.  
  
Neil blinked blearily as they entered the city and pulled into the bus station.  Lincoln, Nebraska.  Another city to cross off his list, if he had kept such a thing.  He spent a few hours wandering around, getting to know the main routes, the shops, the parks.  There was a small community of homeless men camping adjacent to a missionary park; he veered off to find a more private area.    
  
Eventually he found a small private clump of trees that looked promising.  Circling back towards the strip, he bought himself dinner, then poked around in the handful of shops that were still open.  He needed to touch up his roots, and he bought some more dye and then strolled around until he spotted a YMCA.  It was closed, but he checked the hours.  It would be easy enough to buy a short-term membership and keep himself clean.  
  
A week passed, filled with cool nights and crisp days.  The only time Neil actually felt warm was under the spray of the shower at the gym.  He checked the bus schedules; one left for Denver the next morning.    
  
A sudden rain shower swept in, and he ducked into a bookstore to wait it out.  He swept past the photography and art section to distract himself in the spirituality section.  A few other people darted in after him, mostly shoppers who came in laughing and cursing, their bags swinging on their arms.  The only exception was a woman in a black cocktail dress and heels who looked ridiculously out of place.  She headed purposefully towards the science fiction section without sparing Neil a glance.    
  
After about fifteen minutes of pretending to browse through books on the afterlife, which really probably belonged more in the sci-fi section than next to the psychology books, the storm blew itself out.  He slipped past the woman and headed back towards his trees.  
  
*****  
  
Andrew futzed with his dress.  This was the first time he’d tried to maintain an imagined body in front of an awake Josten, though he’d mostly stayed out of his line of attention.  Why Allison had insisted that Coach set him up in this dress and shoes, he had no idea, but he suspected a bet was involved.  As he tried to follow Josten out of the store and nearly broke his ankle on the metal strip in the doorway, he decided that anybody anywhere who would ever wear these fucking shoes was an idiot.    
  
His wobble cost him; by the time he was safely down the two steps and onto the sidewalk, Josten was nowhere in view.  He followed along in the direction he had been traveling and breathed a sigh of relief when he spotted his backpack disappearing around a far corner.  It was hard to keep up when he was teetering on skyscrapers, but he did his best.  
  
Josten was well ahead when Andrew heard a girl’s strident voice yell, “I told you to leave me alone, Craig!”  Scanning the street, he saw Josten slowing down in front of a small, slightly run-down ranch house.  _No, no, no, you fool_.  He sped up as an angry male voice rang out and Josten stopped.  
  
Two blocks away, he saw the source of the commotion: some linebacker type was hanging onto the arm of a dark-haired girl on the front porch of the ranch house.  Before Andrew could shout a warning, Josten vaulted the low fence and approached.  “Hey, asshole,” he called out.  “She told you to leave her alone.”  Andrew yanked off his idiotic shoes and started to run.  
  
“It’s none of your business, kid,” the guy growled back, shaking the woman.  “This is between me and Heather here.”  
  
Josten hopped up the steps and stopped a bare arm’s length from the guy.  “She told you to leave her alone,” he repeated.  
  
“And I will,” the asshole said, turning back to her, “as soon as you explain to me what you were doing with Tommy.”  
  
“I broke up with you over a month ago,” the girl spat back, though her voice quavered.  “It’s none of your business what I do with who.”  
  
The guy moved to backhand her but Josten jumped forward and shoved him in the chest with all his might.  It wasn’t enough to really push the guy back but he did release the girl’s arm, and the slap meant for her caught Josten in the ear, sending him spinning.  The girl retreated to the lawn and hesitated there, hands over her mouth, as Andrew blew past her and leaped up onto the porch.  Somehow the guy hadn’t noticed him before that; he just had time to look up in surprise and say, “Wha—” when Andrew took the hand that still held the stilettos and slammed the guy with considerable force in the nuts.  
  
The guy dropped to his knees and Andrew followed up with a punch to the side of his head, dropping the asshole to the porch floor with what was no doubt a raging concussion.  He turned to Josten and was startled to see horror on his face.  
  
“It’s you,” Josten choked out.  “Club Guy.”  
  
Andrew looked down; his cleavage was decidedly missing, and the dress was a bit too snug in the waist.  “Damnit,” he said.  “I was supposed to be a woman.”  
  
*****  
  
Neil bolted.  There was nothing else he could do; fighting the psycho was out of the question given that he had just floored a man twice his size.  He couldn’t hear if there were footsteps after him over the pounding in his ears.  He darted down an alley, pausing at the end for a split second to look behind him.  Nobody followed him in, but he couldn’t stay there, it was too much like when Club Guy had dragged him into the club in the first place.  He clambered over the fence and dropped down next to a dumpster, startling a collection of multicolored cats.  For some absurd reason he called out an apology to the cats before taking off again.  
  
His spot under the trees wasn’t safe, not if this guy had somehow followed him here despite the thousands of miles he had traveled.  So he walked, straight out of town and into the cornfields.  There was no cover; the corn had been cut down to stalks; but at least he would see anyone approaching.  The rich earthy smell surrounded him and he found himself blinking hard against the burning in his eyes.  
  
His mother was right.  Damnit, his mother was right.  He couldn’t trust anybody, even if up to this point Club Guy had been…helpful.  Even if some part of him recognized that if Club Guy had wanted him harmed, all he would’ve had to do was stand back and watch.  
  
The night passed in fits and starts.  Eventually he let himself sit in the shadow of a silo, listening to the distant roar of trucks on the interstate.  His mind kept replaying the brief snatches of his interactions with Club Guy.  The drag of current against his body, the relief when he heard that first rasping intake of breath, then waking up on a rocky bank to find his duffel and clothes waiting for him; the deep bass in a club and wicked amusement in hazel eyes; fury giving way to weary irritation on a worn porch.  When the pink and yellow streaks of dawn began to brighten the sky, he still hadn’t made sense of it.    
  
There was no sign of Club Guy at the terminal or on the bus; Neil was first on and he watched every passenger board from the seat he had claimed.  Nobody sat next to him, and eventually the movement of the bus and the low murmur of voices lulled him into sleep.  
  
Denver was dry and clear, the peaks of the skyscrapers mirroring the mountains that surrounded it.  Everything was a shade of blue or brown, but Neil’s eyes skimmed over it.  He seemed to have stopped taking in color.  
  
It was easy to find a place to crash, though the temperature dropped rapidly and he soon found himself shivering even under his added layers.  He snatched maybe an hour of sleep before the sound of a throat clearing startled him awake.  
  
“Move along, son,” said the police officer.  “You can’t sleep here.”  
  
Neil got to his feet with a stifled groan, hoisting his pack over his shoulders.  He started to walk away, and flinched involuntarily when the cop touched him lightly on the arm.  
  
“Hey, kid, it’s okay.”  The cop studied him for a moment.  “I haven’t seen you around.  There’s a good shelter three blocks from here, I think they’ve got a cot open.  I’ll walk you there.”  
  
“No, thanks,” Neil said.  “I’m fine.”  
  
The cop shook her head.  “No, you don’t understand.  You’re not allowed to sleep on the streets.  City ordinance.”  
  
Neil followed her wordlessly, and gave her a short nod when they reached the church that doubled as a shelter.  He waited in the vestibule for a few minutes, then ducked out and headed off in the other direction.  
  
Every night the same thing happened.  He was woken up, sometimes more than once, and ordered to move along.  Though the cops were not aggressive, they were unwilling to turn a blind eye either.  After a few days it grew harder and harder to fall asleep, as he kept waiting for the interruption.  The friendly eyes that had been seeming to watch over him had disappeared when he left Lincoln.  For some reason their loss left him feeling bereft, and he questioned his sanity at grieving the loss of an imaginary friend.  
  
It was time to move on to a less vigilant city, but he couldn’t quite drag himself to the bus station.  His routine had established itself quickly: showering at the YMCA on Yale Ave, breakfast at one of the cafes in the area, then heading to a library.  There he would pull a book of the shelf or pick a computer and pretend to read, but the words just blended and blurred.  Once he opened up his Shutterfly account; the pictures blinked back at him, dull and unimportant.  A waste of time.  He logged out, and never called it up again.  
  
He couldn’t have told quite what made him do it.  If it was a conscious decision or merely the result of fatigue.  He just remembered the blare of a car horn and staring frozen into headlights, then a solid blow coming from the wrong direction and the air gusting out of him as he landed hard on the pavement.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> It's going to be okay, I swear!
> 
> Thank you all for your comments, you all are amazing!


	7. Chapter 7

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The aftermath of Neil walking into traffic; Aaron makes an appearance.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Brief mention of Neil's suicidal inclinations. Thanks as always to @tntwme for the beta!

Andrew was getting really Coach-damn tired of this whole ‘sacrificing his body for an idiot’ thing.  Just because he was already dead didn’t mean that getting hit by a car didn’t fucking _hurt_.  There was nothing clarifying about this kind of pain, it was just useless and stupid, and he had to lay there on the street with the taste of blood in his mouth and strangers staring down at him.    
  
With every blink, he expected to be whisked away to the screen room but no, evidently Coach or the Archangel or whoever was in charge of this shit didn’t see fit to spare him this humiliation.  No doubt they figured he deserved it for letting Josten get so depressed he walked into fucking traffic.    
  
He tried to crane his head around to see if he had at least succeeded in saving the idiot but he couldn’t really move well.  When he heard Josten’s shaken voice say, “I’m okay,” to someone, he felt a tug of relief that was too strong to dismiss as merely a job well done.  Then he appeared, pale beneath his tan, looming over Andrew.  
  
“What were you thinking?” Josten whispered.  
  
“You’re…a…fucking…idiot,” Andrew rasped out.  
  
“Why are you here?”  
  
The blare of sirens and bustle of paramedics prevented Andrew from answering.  He gritted his teeth to keep from crying out as his neck was placed in a collar and he was carefully strapped to a back board.  _What the fuck?_ he silently asked the cloudless sky.  Nobody answered.  
  
“What’s your name?” one of the paramedics asked him as she worked.  He blinked, not sure if he was allowed to answer that.  “Can you tell us?”  She turned to Josten.  “What’s his name?”  
  
Josten shook his head, not tearing his eyes away from Andrew.  “I don’t know.”  
  
The paramedic looked back at him and asked again.  “Andrew,” he gasped, and he could feel fluid beginning to fill his lungs.  The last thing he saw before he was lifted into the ambulance was Josten staring after him, Andrew’s name on his lips.  
  
When he opened his eyes he was back in the screen room, and it looked like absolutely everyone was there.  “Did I die again?” he asked.  
  
“Yep!” Nicky said cheerfully.  “Made me twenty rainbows too!”  
  
“Only because Matt always bets against suicide,” Allison scoffed.  “Nobody else took that bet.”  
  
Andrew noticed Kevin suddenly becoming highly attentive to one of the screens just as Nicky said, “Wasn’t just Matt.  Kevin bet against me too.”  He grinned at Andrew.  “He thought there was no way you’d materialize in time to get your guy out of the way.  I figured nobody was going to let an ass that cute get plastered by a car.”  
  
Ignoring the truth of that last statement, Andrew asked, “How do you bet in rainbows?”  
  
“Aww, we didn’t explain this to you?”  Correctly interpreting Andrew’s flat look, Nicky bounced to the door.  “Come look!”  
  
The Archangel cleared her throat and Nicky froze with his hand on the door handle.  “Can we please stick to the discussion at hand?” she asked with all the mildness of a steel cable.  Everybody settled in with a minimum of grumbling while Andrew crossed his arms, pretty certain he knew what the issue was.  
  
“Kevin, continue.”    
  
Kevin fixed Andrew with a cold look.  “As I was saying, Nathaniel needs to be reassigned.  I’m recommending Renee take him on next.  She’s familiar with his type of background, she can assume any form without issue, and she’s not prone to rash decisions.”  
  
“I don’t believe that _Neil_ ,” Renee said, putting a slight emphasis on the name that made Kevin’s mouth tighten, “needs to be reassigned.  However, if Andrew wishes to choose another project, I will be happy to take him on.”  
  
Dan was watching Andrew as Renee spoke; he stared back at her as impassively as he could while Kevin responded.  “Andrew can’t even maintain form in front of Nath—er, Neil.  He can’t keep him.”  
  
“He can maintain form,” Nicky said.  “That’s kind of the problem.”  Andrew wished he had his knives.  And that they could actually do anything to anyone up here.  
  
“Kevin makes a fair point,” the Archangel said.    
  
“Why can’t I just tell him?” Andrew said.  “Are you honestly going to tell me that’s never happened before?”  Given how well-established guardian angel lore was on Earth, he figured it had to have come from somewhere.  
  
“It’s not unprecedented,” Dan admitted.  “But we have moved away from doing that with the advent of technology.  People don’t tend to believe it anymore.”  
  
“Laila Dermott,” Renee said quietly.  
  
“Laila Der—that was totally different,” Kevin protested.    
  
“Yes and no,” Renee said.  “Don’t you agree, Dan?”  
  
The Archangel observed Andrew for a while, her face giving nothing away.  “Do you wish to be reassigned?”  
  
“The deal was, I help this guy, I get my wings,” Andrew said, his fingers digging hard enough into his arms that if he’d had flesh it would have bruised. “That was the deal.”  
  
After an endless minute, she smiled at him, and there was something knowing in the smile.  “All right,” she said, and he blinked and found himself back in Denver.  He still had no answer as to whether or not he could tell Josten the truth; when staring at the star-flecked sky bought him nothing, he flipped it off and went in search of his designated idiot.  
  
*****  
  
Neil stood outside the emergency room, shifting his weight from foot to foot.  It was the third ER he’d visited; the first two had no record of a hit-by-car patient.  He waited until the cop who had been parked in front got into their car and drove away, a cop he recognized from after the accident, then he walked through the sliding doors and up to the desk.  
  
“I’m here to ask about a patient who was brought in here?”  
  
“Name,” said the nurse at the desk, not looking away from his computer screen.  
  
“Mine?”  
  
The man gave an exasperated sigh.  “The patient.”  
  
“Oh, uh, Andrew.”  
  
“Last name.”  
  
“I don’t know.  He was brought in by ambulance, he’d been hit by a car.”  
  
The nurse’s expression flickered slightly at that.  “If you’re not family, I can’t discuss patients with you.”  
  
“But he’s here.”  
  
“I cannot confirm that.”  He pulled the little plexiglass window shut and returned to his typing.  
  
Neil glared at the man through the window but he seemed unmoved.  Eventually he went and sat on one of the benches outside, watching the bustle of the late night in a city ER.  Nobody appeared who looked like Andrew, nobody else came in asking about him.  He found himself reaching into his backpack to touch the soft fabric of the black shirt Andrew had given him.  
  
It didn’t make sense.  None of it did.    
  
The chaos he was watching through the windows quieted down, and he felt the reluctant pull of sleep.  He forced himself to his feet and headed down the street.  He didn’t really have a destination in mind, just followed the street to another street, then across a highway and out of Denver city proper.  Aurora didn’t really look any different, but eventually a green space caught his eye.  There was some sort of park with a closed gate and a sign for a nature center.  He hopped the gate and found a safe spot under a cluster of trees near a stream.  The trickle of water should have been soothing, but all he could think of was Andrew.  The weight of his body in the water, limp against the pull of the current.  The wicked gleam of humor in his eyes as he baited the cop.  And just a couple of hours ago, white-faced and gasping.    
  
He must have fallen asleep, even though he was still aware of the rustle of wind through leaves and the cautious footsteps of deer.  Must have, because when he shot upright to see the source of the distinct scuff of shoes on gravel he found himself looking at the irritated face of a perfectly healthy Andrew.  “What…how…”  He should have said something eloquent and profound, but even in his dream he couldn’t form a coherent sentence.  Dream Neil was not overly different from awake Neil.  
  
Andrew looked around for somewhere good to sit, then gave a long-suffering sigh and folded himself down onto the ground a couple of feet away.  “Why will you not suck it up and rent a fucking apartment?” he asked flatly.  “Are you just hell-bent on making my job difficult?”  
  
“Your job?’  
  
“Yes, idiot, my job.”  He patted his pockets and sighed again.  “Of course.”  He looked up at the sky.  “Are cigarettes really too much to ask?  Self-righteous assholes,” he muttered.  
  
Neil’s dream-self blinked and sat up.  “What do you mean?”  
  
“I mean I want a fucking cigarette but the holy goats who stuck me here refuse to let me have one.”  
  
Every single one of those words made sense on their own but combined into one sentence they made Neil’s head spin.  He briefly let himself imagine farm animals with halos before shaking his head and returning to the more important issue at hand.  “What the fuck is your job?”  
  
“Right now it’s full-time just keeping you from killing yourself.”  
  
“I’m not—” Neil started to protest, but reality caught up to him even in his dream.  This man had been crushed by a car for him.  He was startled to find his vision blurring and blinked hard.  “Are you a ghost?  I don’t believe in ghosts.”  
  
Andrew snorted.  “Then that’s a pretty stupid question.”  Reaching over, he grabbed Neil’s hand; he felt solid enough.  He pulled Neil’s hand up to his throat and Neil could feel his pulse thrumming under his fingertips.    
  
“How?” Neil asked, taking his hand back.  
  
“Figure it out.  Get some sleep, I’ll keep the cops away.  And the cougars.”  
  
Neil drifted deeper, until the dream faded into peaceful blackness.  The chirping of birds in the trees above woke him, and he blinked lazily against the sunlight for a moment until he remembered his dream.  A tiny part of him must have hoped, for he shot upright and whipped around, searching for Andrew, but there was nothing there but undergrowth.  Swallowing down the disappointment that was as bitter as bile, he grabbed his backpack and heaved himself to his feet.    
  
He was almost shaky and he tried to remember if he had eaten the day before.  Brushing the dirt and leaves off his clothes, he hooked his other arm through the pack and started for the gate when he noticed it.  A faint indentation in the dirt and two boot prints, right where dream Andrew had sat through the night.  
  
*****  
  
As soon as Neil began stirring, Andrew willed himself back to the screen room.  He needed to get some answers before he fucked this up and got his mind wiped.  Putting all his strength to it, he flung the door to the room open, wanting the satisfying crash of door against wall and receiving a smooth noiseless swing instead.  The fact that heaven would not allow him something so petty came as no surprise; coming face to face with his brother did.  
  
They stared at each other in startled silence for a moment.  “What the fuck are you doing here?” Andrew growled, as soon as he got his voice back.  
  
“Same thing you are,” Aaron snapped back.  
  
Andrew wished he were close enough to the desk to lean against it, but as it was he would have to pass Aaron to reach it.  “How could you be so fucking stupid?” he asked, crossing his arms.  
  
“I’m the stupid one?  You—”  Aaron closed his eyes and pinched the bridge of his nose for a second.  “You _asshole_.  You _fucking asshole_.  You left me, you took Mom and you left me alone.  What did you think was going to happen?”  
  
“You didn’t need her.”  He didn’t recognize the emotion that was choking him, it was almost anger but not.  Almost pain, but not.  Maybe this was what regret tasted like.  
  
Aaron closed the distance between them and shoved Andrew back a step.  “I didn’t need her?  Maybe you’re right, but what do you know?  I had you for five months, Andrew.  Five fucking months, that’s it, and then you _died_.  You died and you took her with you, and you left me with nothing but an empty house.”  He glared at Andrew, who kept his own face impassive as he stared back.  “You know what?  Fuck it.”  Aaron shouldered past Andrew and left, leaving Andrew staring at the empty space where his shadow had been.  
  
Before he could shake himself out of his fugue, he felt the flicker of power and Coach appeared, leaning against the desk in a mockery of the pose Andrew wanted.  The flames on his arms were subdued, a barely-visible flicker that nevertheless drew Andrew’s eyes.  “So that went well,” Coach said.  Andrew rolled his eyes.  “Don’t worry, he’ll come around.  Eventually.”  
  
“We’re here for a literal eternity.”  
  
Coach shrugged.  “Exactly.  Now I’m assuming you came up here for a reason, since you didn’t seem to be expecting to see Aaron.”  
  
Andrew’s fingers were tingling and his nonexistent blood was roaring in his ears; had he come here for a reason?  He drew himself back with a deep breath.  “You know what went on with Josten.”  Coach gave a small nod.  “Am I about to get erased?”  
  
There was a small flicker across Coach’s face that Andrew couldn’t read and the flames glowed brighter.  “Why?”  
  
“Because I keep revealing myself.”  Obviously.  “I keep breaking the rules.”  
  
Coach hummed; it sounded like a symphony tuning.  “You are not going to get ‘erased,’ as you call it.  Besides, it’s more what you’d call guidelines than actual rules.”  
  
Andrew wondered if it was possible to strangle God, or if he’d just go up in flames the second he reached for him.  “Did you just quote Pirates of the Caribbean at me?”  
  
The grin he received was small but fierce.  “It seemed appropriate.  There are no rules about how you accomplish your task, Andrew, except that you cannot hurt anybody and you cannot interfere with free will.”  
  
“I can’t hurt anybody?  I punched someone in the fucking balls.”  
  
Coach rubbed his mouth with one flame-covered hand.  “Really?  I didn’t catch that one.”  
  
Andrew stared at him for a moment, waiting.  When it became clear Coach had no interest in pursuing it further, he gave a short shake of his head.  “But Kevin—”  
  
“Kevin has a strong belief in how things should be.  He is often right, but there is little flexibility in his way of thinking.”  Another flicker crossed his face; amusement.  “Humans are flawed; that means angels are flawed.  But that does not mean that they do not deserve second chances.”  
  
Andrew thought for a moment; if he could be present, really present, in Neil’s life it would make things so much easier.  And Renee had said something…  “Who’s Laila Dermott?”  
  
Coach looked unsurprised by the question.  Then again, it would be unsettling if Coach ever was truly surprised, given who he was.  “Laila is a member of GAP who has chosen to live on Earth with her charge.”  He turned to his desk and tapped the top; the woodgrain disappeared and a screen took it’s place with a satellite view of Earth.  It began to zoom in, and Andrew felt a familiar swooping sensation that had him swallowing hard and looking away.  When it stopped, two women were visible, walking through a park.  Their ease with each other was obvious.    
  
“Laila’s charge was in an abusive relationship.  She was unable to connect with her using different forms; Sara would not trust new people easily.  So she did what had to be done, and took her Earth form.  She became her friend, her true friend, and eventually Sara found the strength to leave her relationship.  Laila could have returned then, she had earned her wings, but she elected to remain.”  Andrew didn’t have to ask why, seeing the way the two women looked at each other.    
  
Renee had compared him to Laila.  He didn’t think he was even capable of such an emotion as was lighting Laila’s face at that moment.  But maybe that wasn’t what she meant.  Neil needed someone who could earn his trust, and Andrew could see his way forward with that.   
  
His eyes drifted to Neil’s screen; somehow it was simple to pick that one out of the thousands.  The idiot was leaving the YMCA and heading out for breakfast.  Andrew went to leave, but stopped with his hand on the door handle.  He didn’t know what to say to Coach, but it didn’t matter; when he turned back, the room was empty.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Yeah, so Aaron's a bit different than canon given he's got nothing left to lose. And I promise Kevin gets to be less of an asshole with time. Thank you all for the support and comments!


	8. Chapter 8

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Andrew starts to get a bit more direct; both Neil and Kevin object.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Andrew mentions Neil's suicidal tendencies, otherwise no real warnings for this chapter.

It seemed like every time Neil blinked, Andrew was lurking behind his closed lids.  He had run into the guy four times, but he knew his face as well as his own.  Once again, there was the feeling of friendly eyes on him, and he kept glancing around, waiting for a flash of honey-blond hair that never appeared.  Would never appear, if he was right about what that car had done.  
  
Nightfall found him hopping the gate to the park in Aurora again.  Not because he was hoping to run into dream-Andrew; that would be ridiculous and impossible.  No, it was for the perfectly rational reason that this was the first place he hadn’t been disturbed by the cops since coming to Denver.  He could go through his binder, put on his layers, and then get some sleep in peace.  
  
He picked a spot under a different clump of trees on the other side of the stream.  Pulling a water and a granola bar out of his pack, he sorted through his binder; everything remained untouched.  Stuart’s number was still coded in the paper and Neil found his fingers lingering there.  He tugged the sheet out and counted down.  Nine from the top; nine from the left.  There it was.    
  
It would be so easy to call it.  He could walk back to one of the cafes, drink some tea while his phone charged for the first time in over a year, and dial.  Then he would know…and then he would no doubt get dragged back into the life he had rejected not once but twice.  Stuart was the only person in the world who knew he was alive; he had not agreed with Neil’s decision to walk away, but he hadn’t fought him.  He wouldn’t let him walk away a second time.  If he called that number, he was going back to that life.  It was a different type of defeat than the one he was facing here.  
  
Neil stuffed his binder back into his backpack and pulled out his layers.  He emerged from the depths of his heaviest sweatshirt to see movement out of the corner of his eye.  Palming his switchblade, he stood slowly and faced the stand of trees.    
  
Andrew strolled out, hands stuffed in his pockets.  Neil pressed the button on the blade; Andrew caught the distinctive snick and glanced at Neil’s hand but didn’t stop until he was an arm’s length away.  It would have been easy to lash out, to bury the blade in his chest or slash it across his throat, but Neil stood, frozen, staring at the apparition in front of him.  Damn, he looked so real.  
  
“Who are you?” Neil asked.  
  
“I’m pretty sure I told you my name yesterday.”  
  
“You can’t be here, not like this,” Neil said.  “It’s impossible.  I saw it, they were doing CPR on you as they put you in the ambulance.”  
  
Andrew shrugged, a sardonic twist to his mouth.  “I’m a walking talking miracle, what can I say.”  There was something beneath the words, something both bitter and amused, and Neil waited for him to say more but the silence just stretched between them.  
  
Neil finally broke it.  “And following me around is your job.”  Andrew nodded.  “Who are you working for?  Is it Stuart?”  
  
Andrew cocked his head as he looked at him, his eyes narrowing at the name.  “Would you believe that I’m doing this out of the goodness of my soul?”  
  
“Absolutely the fuck not,” Neil replied.  Andrew snorted and Neil inched away, flipping the blade between his fingers.  
  
“I’m not afraid of that,” Andrew said, nodding at the knife.  “And your cynicism is admirable, if misplaced.  It’s more or less true.  Though why, out of eight billion people I had to get stuck with your reckless ass I don’t know.”  
  
“Feel free to go bother someone else, I don’t need you.”    
  
“Self-delusion doesn’t suit you.”  Andrew walked around him and picked up the backpack; Neil tucked the blade against his forearm and charged him, shoving him hard and, when he was off-balance, grabbing his shirtfront with one hand and flipping the switchblade around to rest against Andrew’s jugular with the other.  
  
He felt real enough, though Neil had no idea what a hallucination would feel like; he was warm and solid under his hands, and his breath tickled Neil’s chin when he huffed.  “So the kitten has claws.”  Andrew sounded amused, not afraid, and Neil let the edge of the blade press just a little harder into his skin.  The blade was sharp, and a thin red line appeared along the edge of it.  
  
“You can’t follow me if I slit your throat.”  
  
“My, my, so ungrateful.  Where would you be if it weren’t for me?  Oh, right, at the bottom of a river in Texas.  Or in jail.  Or in the morgue, take your pick.”  Neil stared at him, unable to come up with a response.  “Can you imagine how much fun the cops would have had?  Running your fingerprints and finding out you’d already been dead for three years?”  
  
Neil’s recoil was automatic and involuntary.  “Shut up.”  He backed away a few more steps, but he couldn’t run when Andrew still had his pack.  
  
Andrew’s hand rose to his throat and his fingers came away with a thin sheen of red.  He checked them without any whisper of emotion crossing his face and glanced back at Neil.  “You coming?” he asked, then hitched the backpack over his other shoulder and headed towards the gate.  
  
Neil followed in silence, determined not to give Andrew the satisfaction of words.  Not that he seemed to care either way.  He just strolled on, a sturdy determined figure unfazed by the angry man with a knife two paces behind him.  After a dozen blocks he turned off into a parking lot.  Neil glanced up at the sign for the long-stay hotel and stumbled over the curb, nearly falling.  “No,” he said, quietly enough he was surprised Andrew heard and turned around.  
  
“It’s three hundred dollars for the week,” Andrew said.  “You get a kitchen and free breakfast.  You are staying here for one week so you can get some fucking sleep and start thinking rationally.  Then you’re going to decide the next step.”  He swung the backpack off his shoulder and dangled it in front of Neil.  “I know you’ve got the money.”  
  
Neil knew he shouldn’t do it, he knew Andrew was baiting him, but he lunged for the pack anyway.  Andrew dodged him and used Neil’s momentum to send him to the ground with ease, then with enviable casualness slung the pack back over his shoulders and headed for the door.  “Coming?” he asked flatly, his hand on the handle.  Neil flipped him off from where he lay on the ground, then pushed to his feet and followed.     
  
Andrew was pressing the call bell when Neil made it through the door, over and over like a button for a delayed elevator.  Neil cringed imagining the poor soul who was no doubt swallowing down homicidal tendencies before making their appearance.  He grabbed Andrew’s wrist to stop him and was impressed by the strength with which he wrenched it out of his grasp.    
  
As soon as the buzzer stopped ringing a weary-looking man appeared.  “May I help you?”  
  
Andrew turned to Neil and waited, a mocking challenge in his eyes.  Neil swallowed hard.  “Yes, thank you.  I’m looking to rent a room for the week?”  
  
The man looked between them; Neil was oddly relieved that the stranger could clearly see Andrew, even if that left more questions than answers.  “King-sized bed, or a double room?”  
  
Neil blinked at him for a moment.  “Single room,” Andrew interjected, glancing at Neil out of the corner of his eye.  “I’m not staying.”    
  
The man nodded and began typing in his computer.  After paying for the room, Neil followed the man’s directions to the elevator, Andrew on his heels.  The hallway on the fourth floor was mostly silent, just the faint murmur of a television audible as he passed by a room or two.  It smelled familiar, like the carpet cleaner all these places seemed to use, and Neil found his limbs locking up when he stopped in front of the door to 412.  The key card digging into his fingers should have been grounding, but all Neil could remember was the cheap motel in Seattle, the faint tang of cigarette smoke bleeding through the smell of the cleaner, the dim lights, and the sound of a door breaking down.  
  
“I can’t,” he said before he could stop himself.  Andrew looked at him without pity before plucking the card from his hand and opening the door himself.  Somehow Neil got his joints unstuck and made it into the room and finally, finally Andrew unslung the backpack, dropping it on the desk that sat underneath the window.  Neil went to it, wrapping the familiar straps around his fingers and taking a shaky breath.  It took every ounce of willpower not to open it up and sort through it with Andrew still in the room.  
  
“Shower,” Andrew said.  “Sleep.  I’ll see you tomorrow.”  
  
“I won’t stay here,” Neil said.  “I’m doing fine out there.”  
  
Andrew’s smile was mocking.  “Oh, yes, just fine.  Two suicide attempts in less than five months, haven’t had a decent night’s sleep in weeks, and you look like a walking skeleton, but you’re fine.”  He beckoned Neil closer with two fingers; for some absurd reason Neil actually went.  Andrew put a heavy hand on the back of his neck and pulled him closer.  “I don’t know how to break it to you,” he said quietly in his ear, “but you’re not fine.  You’re running from ghosts.  And if you try to run from me, I’ll still find you.  So stop already.  I’ll see you in the morning.”  
  
He didn’t wait for Neil’s response.  The door clicked shut behind him and Neil stared after him for a long moment before shaking himself, pulling his bag open, and sorting through his stuff.  It was all there, untouched.  He could run.  There had to be somewhere he could go where Andrew wouldn’t find him.  But the softness of the bed called to him and he was unable to resist that siren’s lure.  Tomorrow.  He would figure it out tomorrow.  
  
*****  
  
Andrew ghosted through the hotel to the manager’s office.  The night guy was bustling around in the kitchen, so he took advantage of the vacated computer and called up a browser.  Googling Stuart Wesninski bought him nothing.  He thought for a long moment, dredging up Neil’s mother’s name from his searching four months ago.  Mary Hatford, he thought; or was it Hartford?  He googled both, just in case.  Stuart Hartford had been a soccer coach in Scotland a few decades ago; Stuart Hatford was listed as a resident of London.  Neither came up as an American citizen.  He probably was looking for the wrong last name.  
  
The return of the night manager was his signal to leave.  He paused in the kitchen to snag a sticky bun, then willed himself back up to the screen room.    
  
Of course, it was full of busybody angels.  And of course, Kevin whirled on him the second he appeared.  “You can’t do this,” Kevin said, crossing his arms and slightly spreading his wings.    
  
Andrew leaned back against the door jamb and tore off a piece of his sticky bun.  He wasn’t actually sure if he could eat up here, but he stuffed it in his mouth nevertheless.  Thankfully, this not-body he was stuck in managed to chew and swallow.  “Always a joy, coming back to the Existential Crisis Center,” he said, “but I don’t recall asking for your opinion.”  
  
Nicky snorted and muttered, “Existential Crisis Center,” under his breath.  Matt chuckled; Aaron—well, he wouldn’t look at Aaron; Renee was watching with a small smile, and the Archangel had no expression whatsoever.  
  
“It’s not my opinion,” Kevin snapped.  “You’re breaking all the rules.  You can’t just… _force_ your charge to do stuff, that’s not what we do.  Free will, remember?”  
  
Andrew took another bite before replying.  “Look, Angry Jesus,” he said, earning a ripple of laughter from one side of the room and a quickly smothered grin from Dan.  “The whole, ‘sit back and wait for him to miraculously heal himself’ method isn’t working.  And I didn’t take away free will.  He could have stabbed me, he could have run.  I’m just using the incredibly limited tools I have at my disposal to change his pattern.”  
  
Kevin snorted.  “Neil would never stab you.  If he would ever actually use that blade he’d probably stop getting injured.”  
  
“Wouldn’t, not couldn’t.”  Kevin scoffed and opened his mouth so Andrew talked over him.  “Knowing and manipulating his behavior pattern is not the same as taking away free will, so shut the fuck up.”  He jammed the rest of the bun into his mouth, not breaking eye contact with Kevin.  
  
The others were standing, slack-jawed, even Allison who always maintained her haughty composure.  “We can do this?” Matt muttered to Renee, who gave a small shrug.  
  
“It makes sense,” she replied slowly.  “I mean, we try to steer them all the time, we’re just more subtle about it.  But if that approach doesn’t work, why not take a more direct route?”  
  
Dan rustled her too-vibrant wings, drawing everybody’s attention.  “Well, I don’t recommend we all take this approach with everyone,” she said, “but we shall see if it is effective with this case.  Questions?  No?  Get back to your assignments then.”  They all filed out.  Aaron gave Andrew a long, searching look that Andrew met with a flat one of his own before vanishing.    
  
He realized when he ended up back at the hotel that he had meant to ask the Archangel about how to legitimize “Neil Josten” to make it easier for him to integrate.  Though come to think of it, given how useless she was when he wanted to know why Nathaniel was legally dead, he doubted she would help him.  
  
The night manager was bustling around doing whatever night managers do, so Andrew “borrowed” the computer again and spent some time searching.  It took most of the night, and dodging the manager periodically when he dropped in to use the computer, but eventually he thought he had a plan that would work, if only Neil would agree.  Though the odds of Neil agreeing to do something logical seemed slim to none.  
  
Floating up through the floors, he paused outside 412 to listen.  There was silence in the room, but he could feel Neil in there.  The Archangel hadn’t warned him about that aspect of this, that his charge would pull him like a magnet, but then there was so much she hadn’t told him.  He thought it was a bit ironic that he had less training than a fry cook at McDonalds but was responsible for a human life.  Fitting, but ironic.  He sat, leaning his invisible back against the door, and waited.  
  
Eventually he heard the faint sounds of Neil walking around in his room, then the click of the bathroom door and the hum of the shower.  It went on and on, and Andrew tried not to imagine what precisely Neil was doing in there.  But half an hour passed, and the water was still running.  Andrew passed through the door into the room; Neil’s backpack was there, open, on the bed.  There was no noise aside from the running of the water in the bathroom; Andrew felt a painful twist in his gut.  _No no nonononono_ —  
  
He stuck his head through the door and Neil was standing, hands braced on the counter, unharmed.  At least, there were no fresh wounds; his body was a landscape of a private war, riddled with the scars of bullet holes and jagged wounds and burns.  Andrew had known he had been chased and tortured, he had seen it in the screens.  Still, it was different, seeing it like this: a topographical map of the evil humans could wreak on each other.  For the first time Andrew felt a twinge of appreciation for Kevin, keeping him alive through all of this.  
  
Andrew abruptly realized that his ravaged body was not what Neil was staring at in the mirror.  No, his attention was fixed on his face, his eyes, and the chasm that yawned there was too deep to see the bottom.  Pulling himself back through the walls, Andrew made sure the hallway was empty then took form and rapped loudly on the door.  When there wasn’t an immediate response, he knocked again, then began a drum beat, obnoxious and unmistakeable.  A couple of doors cracked open down the hall, then closed again.  After about twenty seconds the door was yanked open by a visibly furious Neil, wrapped in a blanket from the bed.  
  
“What the fuck is your problem?” Neil hissed.  “It’s eight o’clock in the morning.”  
  
“Exactly, and you’re going to miss breakfast so get your ass going.”  
  
Neil went to push the door closed but Andrew stuck his foot in it.  “I’ve got to take a shower,” Neil snapped.  
  
“Fine.  You take your shower, and I’ll wait for you,” Andrew said, shouldering his way through the door.  “Then you can eat, and we can plan.”  
  
“I’m not planning anything with you,” Neil said, glaring as Andrew settled himself into a chair.  “What the fuck is wrong with you?  Seriously.”  
  
“We can talk about that at breakfast.  Run along, rabbit,” Andrew said, making a shooing motion.    He was gratified by Neil’s startled blink; perhaps the idiot remembered what Andrew had hissed in his ear when the cop was waiting at that house back in Texas.  Neil snatched his pack off the bed and stalked into the bathroom.  This time Andrew heard the unmistakable sound of the shower curtain being pulled shut and the clatter of small shampoo bottles being slammed down with unnecessary force.  
  
Neil was pissed, but that was fine.  He could work with pissed.  Anything but the terrible blankness that was so foreign to a man like Neil, a man born to be a flame.  Andrew didn’t care if he burned, as long as Neil didn’t drown.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you all as always for comments! It makes my heart smile every time I get the notification that someone liked this enough to comment. We're past the halfway mark now (I think, lol, still have a little left to write and we all know I can drag a story out). Hope you enjoyed Andrew's verbal jousting with Kevin as much as I enjoyed writing it!


	9. Chapter 9

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Neil and Andrew start to get to know each other a little bit better.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is a little bit of a transition chapter. Neil thinks about his past a bit so allusions to canon torture from Lola, so warnings similar to the books for that. Thanks as always to @tntwme for the beta!

Neil should have felt better after getting a real night’s sleep.  Instead his body felt heavy, languid; his mind slow.  All he kept seeing every time he blinked was his father’s eyes staring back at him.  He had avoided mirrors for three years, ducking his head in every public restroom, not allowing his gaze to drift sideways as he passed shop windows.  But there was no avoiding the giant mirror in the hotel bathroom, and with one flickering glance he had been caught.  
  
Despite Andrew’s insistence that they would talk, once Neil had reappeared dressed in his absolute most threadbare jeans and his faded shirt and hoodie, he had taken one look at him and led him down to the dining area in silence.  Two cups of coffee, a bagel, generic scrambled eggs, and a bowl of fruit salad that somehow only tasted like oranges later, and Neil was no closer to shaking himself free.  
  
Slinging his backpack over his shoulder, he wandered out into the city, not caring if Andrew followed.  He didn’t even have a place in mind to go, but his feet needed to move.  After a while Andrew tugged lightly on his sleeve and he let himself give in to the silent order. They ended up in front of a large pond in some sort of park in the middle of the city.  Andrew dropped onto a bench that overlooked the water, but Neil stood, staring sightlessly out across it.  Dimly, the low quacking of ducks and honking of irritated geese registered in his consciousness, but he might as well have been in an empty room for all he could see of color and texture.  
  
The day passed like that, Neil following Andrew or Andrew following Neil.  They stopped and got sandwiches at a fast food joint then continued on wandering feet.  Another round of sandwiches for dinner, then Andrew knotted his fingers in the sleeve of Neil’s hoodie and all but dragged him back to the hotel.  “Go to sleep,” Andrew said, shattering the day-long silence between them like glass.  “We’ll talk in the morning.”  Andrew used the bathroom for a couple of minutes before leaving without another word.  Neil barely noticed.  He had no energy for anything beyond staring at the black television screen.  
  
Eventually his bladder’s demands dragged him into the bathroom.  He left the light off and kept his head ducked down while he washed his hands, but when he turned to leave he realized: Andrew had covered the mirror with one of the extra towels.  Flicking on the light, he stared at the knobbly white expanse and wondered how Andrew had known.  Then again, he didn’t know how Andrew knew anything, but he seemed to know _everything_.    
  
The mystery should have kept him awake; as should have the fact that it was not even nine o’clock at night; but the softness of the pillows and the warmth of the blanket dragged him into unconsciousness.  He dreamed of his father, held at bay by a small, unmovable figure with honey-colored hair and golden eyes; he dreamed of birds flying overhead with wailing cries in a language he knew but could not recall; he dreamed of mountainsides bright with yellow and blue flowers; and then he dreamed of nothing at all.  
  
*****  
  
Once Neil was out cold, the hotel door locked and chained, Andrew willed himself up to the screen room.  He had been hoping for just Coach or Renee, or maybe both, but of course he couldn’t be that lucky.  Everyone was there _but_ Coach and Renee.    
  
Nicky interrupted his rambling monologue about the kid he was helping who had left home after his parents tried to send him to conversion camp to give Andrew an unnecessarily cheery wave.  Matt offered a fist bump that Andrew declined with a level stare, Allison gave a haughty nod, Kevin an exasperated one, and Aaron ignored him completely, as predicted.  
  
Everyone went through their updates, accepting suggestions or praise as the Archangel saw fit.  Andrew debated walking back out before his turn came around, but he who hesitates is lost and everyone’s eyes were trained on him before he could.  Kevin, naturally, spoke before Andrew did.    
  
“He’s going backwards again.”  
  
Andrew crossed his arms.  “He was triggered.  Shit happens, he’ll come through.”  
  
“You can’t just assume that because he’s under a roof he’s going to feel safe.  His father attacked them in a motel, that’s how his mother died and Nathaniel got caught.  Why do you think he’s stayed homeless so long?”  
  
Andrew walked over to the desk; the top was spotless and he began pulling out drawers.  In the second one on the left he found a pad of paper and a marker; to his surprise it even smelled like Sharpie when he popped the cap off.  In big black letters, he wrote:  
  
 **157 Days Since Neil Josten Last Got Hurt**  
  
He made a box around the number, recapped the marker, and shoved the pad into Kevin’s chest.  Nicky was watching with wide eyes and there was the faintest gleam in Aaron’s that Andrew wouldn’t let himself look at.  “I think he’s been homeless because he doesn’t know how to stop running.”  Kevin opened his mouth but Andrew bulled on.  “One minute you tell me I can’t influence him directly, the next you’re on my case for not working fast enough.  Make up your mind, or leave me the fuck alone.”  
  
When nobody said anything, Andrew walked out of the screen room.  He swallowed down his surprise when Aaron followed him out.  “What.”  
  
Aaron shrugged.  They walked along the cloud path in silence for a moment; Andrew was about to go back to do more research on the hotel computer when Aaron spoke.  “I don’t get it.”  Andrew stopped and looked at him, really looked at him.  “You’re so protective of this guy, this total stranger.”  He shook his head.  “I was your brother, Andrew.”  
  
A flicker of rage seared his veins.  “What do you think I was doing?  I was fulfilling my promise.”  
  
Aaron gaped at him, then shook his head and snarled, “No, you did nothing until she hit you.  That was not about me.”  
  
“Are you really so fucking blind?”  Andrew didn’t wait for an answer before returning to Denver, but he got no research done that night.  
  
The next morning, Neil was up and showered and closing his hotel door behind him by seven-thirty.  Andrew followed him, invisible, while he took the stairs down to the lobby and served himself breakfast.  When he was settled at a table, watching the handful of other guests with the watchful look back in his eyes, Andrew manifested around the corner and made his way over to Neil.  He dropped into the chair next to him and stole a sausage off his plate when Neil greeted him with a glare.  
  
“You’re not a guest here, you can’t eat their food.”  
  
“I’m not eating their food, I’m eating your food,” Andrew answered, chasing the sausage with a quarter of Neil’s bagel.  Neil huffed in pretend outrage, but there was a tiny flash of humor deep in his eyes.    
  
Andrew spied the backpack tucked between Neil’s feet and reached for it; Neil’s grab at his wrist was lightning fast and hard enough to hurt.  “You don’t need to bring your clothes with you everywhere,” Andrew said, poking at the overstuffed bag with his foot.  “You have the room for another five nights.”  
  
Neil was quiet for a long moment.  “I don’t want to have to come back for them, if I need to leave,” he finally answered; a tiny kernel of truth, offered up as a gift.    
  
Andrew left it alone for now.  Neil finished his breakfast without further theft from Andrew, and then they went back out into the city.  As they reached the sidewalk, Neil stopped so abruptly Andrew nearly ran into him.  “Are you seriously going to follow me everywhere?”  
  
“I’ve been doing it for months,” Andrew shrugged.  “Don’t see why I should stop now.”  
  
Neil opened and closed his mouth a few times, then gave up on forming words and started off.  
  
There was no evident purpose to Neil’s wanderings other than movement for movement’s sake.  After a couple of hours Andrew steered him towards one of the sets of hiking trails that bordered the city.  They hiked up, not particularly steep, but ended up high enough that they were overlooking the whole city.  A bench occupied a small lookout, and Andrew sat.  After a long moment, Neil joined him.  
  
For someone who seemed always in motion, Neil was almost unnaturally still now.  Andrew found himself wishing for a cigarette but settled for finding that quiet place inside himself he had always retreated to.  The silence stretched between them like taffy, smooth and comfortable in the fall sunshine.  Finally, Neil broke it in a voice so quiet it was hard to hear over the rustling of wind through the trees.  
  
“I would have seen you.  Spotting tails…it’s what I’ve done for ten years.”  
  
Andrew hummed.  “Remember the kitten?” he asked, and Neil stiffened beside him.  The desire to run was palpable, he could feel it rolling off Neil in waves.  “And that broken glass photo looked like teeth, is that why you didn’t like it?”    
  
“How.”  It sounded like the word was tearing him on the way out, but at least he hadn’t run.  Yet.  
  
“I don’t know,” Andrew admitted; it was technically true.  “It comes with the job.”  
  
“The job.”  There was a hitch in Neil’s breathing, and he let out something that might have been a laugh but it sounded more pained than amused.  “And your job is what, to make sure I don’t break the law?”  
  
“No,” Andrew said, “I don’t think they care much about that.  Well, unless you murder somebody in cold blood or something, but you don’t seem the type.”    
  
Neil did laugh then, and it quickly bubbled over into hysteria.  Andrew put a hand on his back and pushed him down so his head was over his knees.  “Breathe, you fucking idiot,” he said, when the irregular hitching of Neil’s body under his palm had gone on for too long.  Neil coughed and then sucked in a breath; as soon as the rhythm was more regular Andrew released him and was rewarded with an elbow directed at his gut.  He caught it easily and tsked.    
  
“You really don’t know me, if that’s what you think,” Neil coughed out, still hunched over looking at the ground between his feet.  Andrew didn’t dignify that with a response.  He’d seen it, over and over in the screen: a chance to take a life, to wreak permanent vengeance, rejected.  Neil might lie to himself, but he couldn’t lie to Andrew.  
  
Neil dragged himself upright and sat for several minutes, focusing on breathing.  Andrew looked out over the city; the slope was gentle enough it didn’t really trigger the panicked clench in his gut, and he kind of liked the way the high rise buildings mimicked the mountains behind them.  He was aware of Neil’s eyes on him after a while, but stared ahead, steadfast, waiting.  
  
“Why now?” Neil finally asked.  
  
“You ask a lot of questions,” Andrew said, wishing even more for a smoke.  Cash had appeared in his pocket when he had been going to buy food, but he doubted the same thing would happen for cigarettes.  
  
“Wouldn’t you?  If you just learned that someone had been following you around for months?”  
  
There was no denying the accuracy of that, though Andrew would probably have hit first and asked questions later.  “How about an exchange,” he proposed.  “Truth for truth.  I’ll answer a question honestly, and then you will.”  
  
“I thought you already knew everything,” Neil said, voice thick with sarcasm.  Andrew just gave him a flat look, and eventually Neil huffed.  “Fine.”  
  
“It’s not just now,” Andrew said.  “Someone has been…around since you and your mother went on the run.”  
  
“Bullshit.”  
  
Andrew just shrugged; he wasn’t going to try to prove it.  Neil seemed unsettled by Andrew’s lack of response.  “How come you’re talking to me now?”  
  
“I would think that was obvious.  Homeless man who keeps getting in fights with bullies and is ready to throw himself off of bridges and all.  You need a little more help than just someone deflecting a bullet.”    
  
Neil looked like he was going to protest but subsided.  “Your turn.”  
  
“What are you running from?”  
  
It was interesting, watching Neil curl in on himself with no physical change to his posture.  “My father.”  
  
“Who’s dead.  As you know.”    
  
“Yeah, but his people—”  
  
“Are also dead, or in prison.  One of the most successful takedowns of a gang in FBI history, according to Wikipedia.”  Andrew kept his expression even as Neil glanced at him, lightning quick and sharp enough to slice.  “It’s like I said the other night, you are running from ghosts.”  
  
Neil was on his feet and moving before the last word had faded from the air, and Andrew followed with a sigh.  This inability to keep still was one of the most aggravating things about this assignment.  Andrew might not need to sleep or eat to function, but he still wished Neil had more couch-potato tendencies.  Still, Andrew thought, following Neil up further into the mountains, at least he had a good view.  
  
*****  
  
Neil didn’t remember deciding to run, he just knew the familiarity of his feet hitting the ground, the rhythm of the pull of his breaths.  He wasn’t sure if Andrew was following.  He couldn’t hear anything over the roaring in his ears, except the same word, over and over.  _Ghosts.  Ghosts.  Ghosts._  
  
His strength gave out too soon and he stumbled over nothing.  How had he let himself get this pathetic?  He caught himself on his hands and through sheer stubbornness shoved his body upright.  Andrew was standing maybe ten feet behind him, face flushed and breathing hard, with a vaguely annoyed twist to his features.  It was reassuring, somehow.  More evidence that he was real.  
  
“Come on, Aragorn,” Andrew said, “let’s go back to civilization.  You need to eat something.”  
  
“I’m fine,” Neil replied, refusing to ask who or what Aragorn was.  He looked Andrew straight in the eye, ignoring his stomach’s traitorous grumble.  
  
“Sure you are.”    
  
“Go to hell,” Neil snapped, or tried to.  It came out as more of a weary wheeze.  
  
Andrew gave a small, twisted smile that lasted less than a blink.  “Too late,” he said, and gestured down the path they had traveled.  
  
Neil considered arguing further but he knew Andrew was right, he needed food.  Not bothering to parse out the meaning behind the last words, he settled for walking down the hill as briskly as he could without falling, ignoring the footsteps behind him.  His mind swirled over Andrew’s revelations.  He didn’t believe him; he couldn’t.  It was impossible.    
  
A tiny voice whispered, _but what if it’s true?_   Stuart’s people had killed Lola and DiMacchio when they took out his father.  Stuart had gotten Neil out of there and away before the FBI had come in, leaving behind only scraps of bloody clothes and a “missing/presumed dead” status in the system.  It made sense; the feds knew how good Nathan’s people were at disappearing bodies.   
  
Neil had tracked the story almost obsessively for a while, but had slowly petered out.  Last he knew it was still an “ongoing investigation.”  It had never occurred to him the FBI might actually be competent enough to eliminate the rest of the gang.  
  
His fingers found the ridge of the worst of his scars through his shirt, a relic not of that night but of one years earlier.  His mother’s hoarse rasping breaths as she demanded he keep on running echoed in his ears.  He wondered if she knew Nathan and all his thugs were gone, if there was any sort of existence after death, any sort of consciousness.  What would she think if she saw him now?  But he already knew he was pathetic, that he’d kept his promise in action but not at heart.  
  
Andrew tugged on his sleeve and steered him into a Wendy’s once they were back in the city.  “Eat slowly,” Andrew said as they sat down with an overflowing tray.  “I’m not cleaning up puke.”  Neil suppressed an eye roll and they ate in silence, Andrew apparently subsisting on fries dipped in his milkshake.  Despite his constant presence as a pebble in Neil’s shoe, Andrew was difficult to read.  Neil still wasn’t sure who he worked for.  Stuart made the most sense, but that didn’t explain how Andrew knew such obscure details of Neil’s existence.     
  
As his strength rose, so did his temper.  He wasn’t even sure who he was angry at.  He stood, tray in hand, and Andrew got to his feet across from him.  “Look,” Neil said, “I know you think this is your job or whatever, but you can tell Stuart to back the fuck off.  I appreciate what he did, but this is ridiculous.”  
  
Andrew cocked his head in feigned confusion.  “I don’t know a Stuart, but if I run into one I’ll relay a message.”  
  
“Fuck you,” Neil snapped.  “You have no right to be following me, I don’t care what he’s paying you.”  He shoved the tray at Andrew, who caught it right before it slammed into his chest.  Andrew let it fall onto the table and the other patrons turned to look at the source of the clatter.  Neil’s mouth clamped shut and he almost shuddered at the feel of eyes on him.  Spinning on his heel, he made it out onto the street before the weight of stares suffocated him.  
  
Of course, of freaking course, Andrew was right behind him.  “I thought I told you to go away.”  
  
“You told me to tell Stuart to back off.  Which I’d be happy to do, if I knew who the fuck he was.”  
  
Neil’s fingers found the handle of his switchblade in his pocket.  He knew Andrew didn’t fear it, but that didn’t mean it wouldn’t make him bleed.  For an endless second he considered using it, but there were people all around them.  And he couldn’t deny that Andrew had helped him, even if it had been unwanted.  “Just…just leave me alone.”  
  
Andrew touched two fingers to his temple in mock salute.  Neil headed up the street; when he reached the corner he glanced back and Andrew was gone.    
  
Sighing with what should have been relief, Neil headed through the streets until he found a public library.  He made a beeline for the computers.  It took no time to find the Wikipedia article Andrew had referenced, but Neil trusted Wikipedia less than he trusted a random stranger on the street.  It took a bit longer to find the arrest records and police reports, but they were all there.  The FBI had even nailed the dirty cops, half a dozen of them in all.  Twenty three people total, dead or imprisoned, and Neil only recognized a little more than half the names.  
  
He sat there, staring at the screen, re-reading coroner’s reports and trial records over and over until the librarian gently kicked him out.  He wiped the browser history then stood; it was impossible to tell if the shakiness of his legs was fatigue or relief.  On his way back to the hotel, he detoured into a grocery store and bought enough for several meals.  Alone in his kitchen, he made an omelet and some dirty rice then sat at the desk to eat it.  The quiet and solitude should have been welcome after two days in the presence of a particularly strange stranger, but it was impossible to keep his thoughts from drifting.    
  
The images of Lola falling in a shower of gunfire, of DiMacchio laid out with sightless eyes, of his father on his knees, still snarling as bullets ripped into his chest, warred with the ghost of feeling his arms and hands and abdomen being carved up by Lola’s knife.  He checked his fingernails for blood and was surprised to find his hands clean and painless, the scars faded over years.  For a moment, he could smell the acrid smoke of a burning car.    
  
He stumbled into the bathroom to splash water on his face, and was caught again by the towel over the mirror.  That small kindness caused pain of a different sort to lance through his chest.  As he patted his face and neck dry, his thoughts drifted to Andrew in the club, throwing his shirt at Neil, mocking the cop; of him flooring the asshole in Nebraska with high heeled shoes to the crotch; of their middle-of-the-night conversation that Neil still thought might have been a dream.  He thought of all of this, and he wondered.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you all for continuing with me on this journey! I love all the comments and encouragement!


	10. Chapter 10

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Renee sees through Andrew a little too well for comfort; Neil prepares to move on.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Trigger warning for a pathetic lack of Marvel universe knowledge on Neil's part. Very mild violence. Thanks as always to @tntwme for the beta!!

The Existential Crisis Center was empty, for once.  Andrew wandered around, glancing at each of the screens, ignoring the pull of his own.  Neil was safe for now, ensconced in a blanket cocoon on the hotel bed, though he was not asleep.  There was no need to keep checking.  
  
His eyes caught on one, a late-night gathering in a basement that glowed with that slightly blue-tinge of fluorescents.  He wasn’t sure what had drawn his attention at first; then he recognized a man sitting in the circle.  His memory tugged at him, of this same man resolutely walking past an alley, and he scanned the others in the circle.  One of them, a woman with mousey brown hair, had familiar hazel eyes.  
  
“Aaron requested addicts,” Renee’s voice came from behind him.  Andrew didn’t jump, but it was a near thing.  “That way he can attend NA meetings and still do his job.”  
  
There was a healthy amount of irony in Aaron attending a faith-based twelve-step program while literally embodying the third step, but Andrew didn’t feel like getting into it with Renee at that moment.  She stepped up to his side, scanning the walls.  “Yes, Aaron and Matt both requested addicts.  Nicky does best with queer youth, especially those from intolerant homes.  Kevin’s showing some promise with his depressed domestic violence victim.  And Allison’s strength is eating disorders.”  Andrew knew she was telling him this for a reason; he had to fight to keep his feet planted and his hands from giving himself away.  “And then there’s you.”    
  
Her eyes flicked to him for a second before going to the far wall, and he was certain she was staring at his screen.  Neil’s screen.  Whatever.  “You immediately get drawn to the reluctant wanderer with a savior complex.”  
  
“What about you?” he asked, not acknowledging her assessment.    
  
She gave him a serene smile that did little to mask her amusement at his evasion.  “I do best with people suffering from a crisis of faith.”  
  
There were layers of implications behind her words.  “What do you want?”  
  
“I was under the impression it was you who wanted to talk to me.”  When he didn’t answer, she gestured to the open door.  “Care to take a walk?”  
  
With a last glance at Neil, who appeared to have finally fallen asleep in his mound of blankets and pillows, Andrew followed her out into the mass of clouds.  He wondered, not for the first time, how there was nobody else around.  It didn’t make sense; with all the dead over the millennia, surely there should be at least some souls bobbing around up here being annoying.  But he only ever saw the same group of assholes.  
  
She led him to what looked on approach to be a pond and stopped right on the edge.  Andrew joined her and glanced down, then nearly stepped back when his stomach gave a lurch.  It was not a pond; it was an opening with a view down to the world below, dotted with green fields and roads and the faded twinkle of lights of a distant city like stars at sunrise.  It was sunrise, he realized with a jolt; he wondered what part of the world he was looking at.  
  
“Oooh, well done, Nicky,” Renee murmured, and he swallowed his stomach out of his throat and followed her gaze.  A brilliant rainbow arced over one end of a mist-infused village, reflecting in the water of a small pond so it seemed to form an endless eye-shaped rainbow loop.  “Actually you should take some credit for this too, you keep winning him rainbows.”  
  
Oh, so that was what that meant.  Andrew crept a little closer to the edge.  From here the bucolic scene looked peaceful, but he knew better than most how easily surface beauty could hide rot.  He wondered how Nicky decided where to place the rainbows he won, if it was purely aesthetic or if he used them as symbols for people in need.  And then he wondered if that ever would have helped him, if he would have noticed such a thing when he had a blade to a vein, literal or otherwise.    
  
Neil would notice, he realized.  Maybe that was why Renee had brought him here.  He forced his gaze away from the ground far below and looked up to find her watching him.    
  
“What did you want to talk about?” she asked, quiet and gentle as a summer breeze.  
  
“Why did you think I was a good match for Neil?”  It wasn’t what he had originally intended to ask, but at this moment it seemed important.  
  
She hummed and looked back at the rainbow that was intensifying as the morning mist burned off.  Her words, when she spoke, were slow and careful.  “What was it you recognized in him, that first day you saw him?”  She glanced at him and laughed softly at his expression.  “I was told by the Archangel what happened.  You saw something, and you knew immediately what to do.  Why?”  
  
“It was obvious.”  
  
“Not to Kevin, who has cared for him for years.”  She waited a beat for him to respond, then went on.  “You too were a wanderer who needed a safe home, and you too have the instinct to throw yourself into danger to protect others.”  
  
Andrew almost opened his mouth to argue, but the truth crashed into him and he clenched it shut instead.  Renee watched him and when she confirmed he wasn’t going to reply turned back to the scene below.  The rainbow was disappearing as the sun rose higher.  They never lasted long; Andrew wondered if that ruined Nicky’s fun, or if the fleeting nature of the prize made it all the more valuable.  He closed his eyes and willed himself back down to Earth.  
  
*****  
  
Neil managed to shower, eat breakfast, pack himself a couple of sandwiches, and leave the hotel without being interrupted by a pushy blond menace.  He told himself this was a good thing.  Another person was a liability, never an asset.  Even if that person was smart and funny and good in a fight.  Even if he found himself seeing color again, in brief snatches of gold and brown and flecks of green.  Even if he kind of liked having that feeling of benevolent eyes watching his back again.    
  
It was all an illusion, anyway; Andrew’s benevolence was bought and paid for by someone.    
  
It was time to move on again.  Past time.  He had been here for weeks, and there was no excuse for it.  The room was rented for another few days; if he left now, Andrew wouldn’t be expecting it.  Neil ignored the little twinge at the thought that maybe this time Andrew wouldn’t follow, wouldn’t find him in the most unexpected way.  
  
The city was familiar to him by now, the streets sketched out in his mind.  A part of him wanted to go to a library and read more articles about the decimation of his father’s gang, but he resisted.  For the first time in months he felt strong enough to yield to the pull to run.  Yesterday’s debacle had proven how pathetic his endurance was, but that was all the more reason to start building up again.  
  
The steady rhythm of his feet hitting pavement was music as he jogged through one of the city’s interior parks; the burn of his muscles was a balm.  After a couple of miles he took a break to eat one of his sandwiches on a park bench, the fading autumn sun warming the back of his head.  After a half an hour’s rest, he started off again.  
  
He hated the slow pace his body forced him into.  He hated that he had ever let himself get to this point even more.  Pushing through the sear in his lungs, he ran until his legs were trembling and he had to stop, bent over, hands on his knees to keep from puking.  Yet there was a lightness to him when he finally started walking again on numb feet.  He tried to remember when he had last run for the sheer love of running and could not.  Every memory was tainted with pain and fear but this.  
  
Halfway down a gentle slope he froze.  For one glorious moment, he could see the photo of the scene in front of him: the lone tree at the bottom of the hill, its branches raised like arms in supplication to the peaks of glass-and-concrete buildings behind it, the low-hanging sun gilding its yellow leaves.  Then it faded into background scenery again.  He blinked against the stinging in his eyes, his heart aching at the loss.  His feet seemed to move of their own accord, dragging him farther into the city and away from the beauty that wanted to ground him.  
  
The bus station was an ugly box filled with uncomfortable metal chairs and the stench of gasoline and depression.  He spent a long time scanning the departure screens.  Austin.  Dallas.  Las Vegas.  Los Angeles.  San Francisco.  Phoenix.  Santa Fe.  Jackson.  Bozeman.  The California cities were off the list immediately; likewise Texas.  Jackson and Bozeman were cold, but small.  Maybe in the spring he could head up there, when it wouldn’t mean death by exposure.  Vegas could work; so could Phoenix, or Santa Fe.  He stared at the names, waiting for the draw of inspiration.  
  
He was still undecided when he went through the sliding doors to find a familiar figure leaning against the building.  “So where are we headed?” Andrew asked, looking up from studying his nails to step into his space.  Unwanted relief flooded Neil’s stomach, then quickly flared into irritation.  Whether the irritation was directed at himself or Andrew was something he wasn’t in the mood to examine.  
  
“Fuck off,” he snapped, turning into Andrew so that he shoved him with his shoulder.  Neil took the brunt of it, since Andrew was basically an immovable force despite his stature.  No wonder he was fine after getting hit by a car.   Andrew followed Neil up the sidewalk, stepping on his heels with what felt like deliberate regularity.  “I thought I told you to leave me alone?”  
  
“I did,” Andrew said.  “For a whole twenty four hours.  Then you decided to scope out your next place of existence, so here I am.”  
  
Place of existence.  Neil almost cringed at the phrasing.  It was eerily accurate; trust Andrew to say it so bluntly.  He sped up to protect his heels and could have sworn he heard Andrew laugh under his breath.  Asshole.  
  
Andrew didn’t talk the whole way back to the hotel, a silent sheepdog herding him away from his escape.  There was an amused glint in his eyes when Neil slammed the door in his face, and Neil found himself pacing his room while the sky outside the window darkened.  It was never truly dark here; like all cities, the air seemed to pulse with light even in the middle of the night.  Illumination of dark corners was both his friend and his enemy; tonight he found himself wishing for the cloaking blackness.  
  
Even without it, he could do it.  One of the buses left at ten eighteen; he could be on it and moving.  If he dyed his hair a different color, Andrew might not even realize he had left.  He went into the bathroom.  Ripping the towel off the mirror, he checked his roots, which were just beginning to show the faintest touch of rust.  There was a flash of icy blue as he straightened; he clicked the light off and stood in the transient darkness, breathing against the loathing bubbling in his chest.  
  
He would never get away.  Not when everywhere he went his father’s eyes stared back at him.  
  
In the little kitchen he made himself two grilled cheese and heated a can of tomato soup, scarfing it down without tasting it.  He pulled a few twenties out of his binder, shoved his wallet in his pocket, and swung the bag onto his back.  There was a pharmacy a few blocks down; he already knew where they kept their dyes.  Fifteen minutes, he could be back here; another hour and he could be back on the road.  
  
The pharmacy was practically empty, and he purchased the “Brown Sugar” hair dye, cringing internally at the name.  It was several shades lighter than what he’d been using, and that was what he needed, even if it sounded oddly racist for something so innocuous.  He started thinking about the next phase; heading down to Santa Fe, dealing with the desert and the dryness.  Hopefully he could find somewhere to squat, like he had in Nevada last winter.  Or maybe…  
  
A woman’s shout interrupted his thoughts.  He looked up to see someone lying face down halfway down the next block, and a man running towards him carrying what looked like a purse.  There were only a handful of other people on the block, and they were all watching the man dart past them.  The lights were in Neil’s favor, and he bolted across the empty side street in front of him, intending to slam into the purse-snatcher.  The man saw him coming and dodged at the last second; Neil managed to hook one of the thief’s ankles with his foot and the guy stumbled and went to his knees.    
  
Neil skidded to a stop, trying to redirect his momentum to keep the guy on the ground, but the man was on his feet by the time Neil had turned to meet him.  Like just about every other person over the age of fourteen, he was bigger than Neil, and he took a swing, first with the stolen purse and then with his fist.  Neil snagged the purse with one hand and pulled, dragging the man off-balance enough that his punch landed on Neil’s ear instead of his face.  It hurt like a bitch but before Neil could retaliate, the man was off him and on the ground, gasping for air with a hand wrapped around his throat.  
  
Andrew crouched over the man’s prone form, one knee on his chest, and there was a terrifying blankness to his face.  Neil debated just dropping the purse and running, but he couldn’t run now.  “Hey,” he said.  When he got no response he waved a hand in front of Andrew’s face.  Andrew looked up at him, then loosened his grip enough for the man to breathe but did not release him.  Neil just stared at him, all words dashed from his lips.  Andrew seemed to glow faintly, not reflecting the neon lights above them but producing a light of his own.  Neil blinked and the illusion was gone, but flames still flickered in Andrew’s hazel eyes.  
  
“Andrew…”  Neil’s voice came out in an undignified squawk and he cleared his throat and waved the bag he held.  “Um, I’m going to bring this back to the woman.”  
  
When he got no response, he pushed his way through the small crowd that had gathered to where the woman was standing on shaky legs, helped by a girl about Neil’s age.  The woman had a gash to her temple but the blood on her face was already drying.  Neil held the purse out wordlessly.  
  
“Thank you,” the woman said in Spanish, before going on in a mix of English and Spanish.  “Thank you.  You and your friend, you are angels.  I don’t know what I would have done, all my life is in there.”  It took every ounce of willpower for Neil not to hug his own backpack to him.  He brushed her off as politely as he could in Spanish, then turned to find Andrew behind him and the purse-snatcher surrounded by a collection of people preventing him from escaping.   
  
“Come on, Captain America,” Andrew said, snagging Neil’s sleeve and tugging him away.  “You don’t want to be here when the cops come.”  
  
Neil followed him, bemused.  “Captain America?” he asked, when they were half a block away.  “Like, that beefy dude with the shield?”  
  
Andrew shook his head.  “You are a travesty.”  
  
“I’ve been on the run for more than half my life,” Neil argued.  “I haven’t had time to watch TV.”  
  
Andrew stopped abruptly, holding up a finger as if to shush him.  “Did you hear that?”  Neil listened for a moment, but only the usual nighttime sounds of the city reached his ears.  “That was the sound of a million fanboys’ heads exploding.”  
  
Neil shoved at Andrew’s shoulder, a laugh bubbling up in his throat.  He swallowed it down.  This wasn’t allowed.  _Don’t trust anyone_ , his mother’s voice hissed in his ear and he stifled a flinch away from her imagined fury.  _Run_ , she said.  _Run, don’t ever stop running_.  He looked at Andrew, solid and unyielding at his side, all of the fire and fury of before now banked.  Not gone, just…subdued.  But he knew in that moment that Andrew’s fire would never burn him.      
  
Behind them, the sound of sirens wailing almost had Neil turning around.  Andrew’s hand brushed lightly against his back, keeping him moving forward.  Goosebumps raised the hairs on his arms under his sleeves at the touch.  Suddenly, he didn’t want to run.   
  
“Sorry, Mom,” he muttered.  
  
“I am not your damn mother,” Andrew said, and Neil did laugh then.    
  
“Thank fuck for that.”  
  
Neil couldn’t decipher the look Andrew gave him in response, nor the aggrieved sigh.  “Come on, you idiot.  You need to get some ice on that ear before it turns into a cauliflower.”  
  
Right.  Neil had forgotten he’d gotten hit.  His hand went up automatically; his ear was hot and a little bit tender.  Andrew led him back towards the hotel that he would not allow himself to think of as home.    
  
He let himself into his room and Andrew followed, uninvited.  “Sit,” Andrew said, and when Neil didn’t comply he pushed him into the chair with a firm hand at the back of his neck.  “Stay.”  
  
“I’m not a dog,” Neil said, watching as Andrew opened his freezer then slammed it shut when he realized it was empty.  
  
“You sure?” Andrew asked.  “Because I’m pretty sure the last time I saw someone pick a fight with that size ratio was a poodle and a pit bull.”  
  
“I didn’t pick a fight!  That asshole robbed that woman!”  
  
“Yeah, yeah, and twenty people watched him do it and did nothing.  But you…”  Andrew spotted the ice canister and snagged it and the key card that Neil had dropped on the desk.  “Stay,” he said, backing out of the room.  “Good dog.”  
  
Neil contemplated getting up and leaving just to see what Andrew would do, but the thought exhausted him.  Instead he pulled out his hair dye and sorted through his bag.  Everything was intact.  His fingers lingered on the camera case that was buried deep in the middle pocket surrounded by his clothes; the click of the key in the door had him dropping his bag on the floor.  
  
Andrew wrapped some ice in a hand towel, then inspected Neil’s ear, grabbing his jaw and tilting his head so he could see it better.  “Kevin’s going to be insufferable,” he muttered as he set the makeshift icepack against Neil’s ear with unexpected gentleness.  Neil reached up, taking over, and Andrew backed away the second their fingers brushed.    
  
‘Who’s Kevin?”  
  
“Unimportant,” Andrew said, waving his hand in dismissal.  “There’s more ice in the freezer, ice it again before you go to bed.”  With that, he left without a second glance, and Neil found himself staring at the door, feeling strangely lost in the sudden silence in the room.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hope you all enjoyed this one, it was fun to write. Thank you so much for the comments, every time I get the little notification I smile. HMU on my Tumblr if you ever want to chat! (And are you happy now Niko? Lol)


	11. Chapter 11

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Andrew starts to understand his brother a little better; Neil is challenged to make a place for himself.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter's a little on the short side, and then we get into a series of longer ones. No real warnings for this one. Thanks as always to @tntwme for the beta!

Andrew landed on the doorstep of the screen room but he couldn’t bring himself to go in.  He strolled up the path Renee had taken him to the gap in the clouds, then continued on, giving the death drop a wide berth.  The clouds climbed higher, but despite the ascent he never felt out of breath.  He passed another gap, then another.    
  
He followed a curve in the cloud path; another opening yawned in front of him.  Movement caught his attention and he pulled himself up short.  A familiar figure with iridescent wings straightened.  Aaron.    
  
Aaron didn’t say a word, but there was a silent challenge in the lift of his chin.  Andrew approached and stopped at his side, not taking his eyes off his brother’s face.  They stared at each other for a long moment, before Aaron gestured to the scene below.  “Aren’t you going to look?”  It didn’t sound like a taunt, but Andrew knew Aaron had noticed his reaction to heights all those years ago.  His hands clenched into fists for a split second before he forced himself to relax and turn to the opening.  
  
He was looking out over a vast swirling expanse of reddish brown, streaked with narrow ribbons of blue.  It looked like a slice of polished stone he had once seen in a store, nothing at all like he pictured any part of the earth.  He found himself leaning over, studying it closer.  In the far distance was a swaying expanse of blue and green and white; the ocean.  Never in his wildest dreams had he imagined any part of the earth looked like this.

  
  
“The Sahara,” Aaron murmured, cracking the silence.  Andrew gave a short nod in acknowledgement but didn’t speak.  “This is my favorite one,” Aaron went on.  “I like to watch it during wind storms.”  
  
“I thought you were doing some sort of work in Hades when you weren’t with your charge.”  
  
Aaron glanced up at him, then back down to the desert.  “I was.  I do.”  He shrugged with false casualness.  “I volunteered to be one of the angels who helps decide who is reborn.”  
  
Andrew digested this.  He hadn’t realized those in Hades world could be reborn though that made sense; otherwise it seemed like such a waste.  But he didn’t know why Aaron had chosen that assignment, on top of his addict that he watched out for.  He wasn’t sure he even wanted to know.  According to the Archangel Aaron knew that he was in the indecision, which meant…  
  
“You’re looking for her,” he ground out.  
  
Aaron was silent for a long moment, and when he finally met Andrew’s eyes his expression was rawer than Andrew had ever seen it.  “Do you have any good memories?” he asked softly.  
  
That was not what Andrew was expecting.  “A few.”  There were a handful from life that had been good in the moment, even if they had been twisted later.  One of his foster sisters getting him his first ice cream cone.  Cass, smoothing back his hair and handing him his stack of Christmas presents.  The first time he read a book that had pulled him into its world.  When he got a letter in an almost-familiar hand, telling him he had a twin brother.  
  
Aaron nodded absently.  “Yeah.  Same.  I look for people like us, or even worse, so maybe next time…”  He trailed off, and Andrew didn’t need to hear more.    
  
He turned to walk back to the screen room, Aaron at his shoulder.  There was a different note to the quiet between them, a sharp edge soothed.  Not companionable, exactly, but nothing for them to slice each other open on.  Maybe what Aaron was doing was the best thing the afterlife could offer to most.  Oblivion, and the chance for a better life another time around.  That was what Aaron had wanted to offer _him_.  But despite the way it had been presented, there had never really been a choice for him.  Not once he saw Neil despondent and nameless on that damn screen.  
  
The screen room was full, of course.  “Hey, it’s the mini-Angels!” Nicky exclaimed as they came in.  Andrew heard Aaron sigh behind him.  “Oooh, Min-Yangels, am I right?  Like your name?”  He held his hand up for a high five and was stared down by both twins.  “Andrew, my dude!  Nice Kung-fu or whatever that was.  I think I should learn to fight, it’s gotta be fun getting in the trenches like that.”  
  
Aaron snorted.  “You’d be crying thirty seconds in.”  
  
“True,” Nicky said, unbothered.  “I’m too pretty for that shit.”  
  
Dan cleared her throat then, drawing everyone’s attention.  Andrew half-listened to the updates, mostly watching Aaron settle into his usual corner.  He was barely visible behind Matt and Allison, but he watched everyone with hawk eyes and spoke up occasionally.  Andrew wondered when he had changed, if it was in the aftermath of the car accident or an effect of his death.  Maybe freedom had changed him: freedom from Tilda, from the drugs, from the constraints of a shitty life.  Freedom from Andrew.  Before, he had always been looking to surrender his identity to whoever wanted it but now…There was an ache under his ribs as he watched Aaron debate handling of Matt’s addict, the brightness in his face and the concise gestures of his hands.     
  
When all their eyes turned to him he pushed away from the wall, snatched the pad of paper off the desk where it somehow still sat, and crossed out the **157** and wrote in a large zero.  He shoved it into Kevin’s chest on his way back to his spot and turned to face the room, expecting laughter and the settling of bets.  Instead, all focus turned to Kevin; there was a stillness in the room as everyone held their unnecessary breath.  
  
Kevin stared at the pad for a long moment then tossed it onto the desk and looked at Andrew.  “Come talk to me when he’s sewing himself up in a truck stop bathroom using a packet of suture he stole from a walk-in center.  A little clip on the ear doesn’t even count.”  He held Andrew’s eyes for a long moment, then gave a faint nod, just a bare dip of the chin.  Voices swelled around them like a tide but Andrew didn’t hear the words.    
  
He pictured Neil, face set and pale as he shoved a curved needle through his own skin, Kevin hovering unseen, hands fluttering in helplessness in the background.  He glanced at the screen, _his_ screen.  Neil was asleep sprawled half under, half out of the blankets.  His camera sat on the bed next to him, and Andrew swallowed down the satisfaction that rose at the sight.  When he looked up he caught Kevin also looking at the screen, an unfamiliar expression on his haughty face.  It looked almost like hope.  
  
*****  
  
Neil wasn’t surprised when he made it down to the dining area and Andrew was already slouched across one of the bench seats, watching him with impatient eyes.  He turned with ostentatious slowness and selected eggs, sausage, toast and fruit from the buffet.  After a moment’s hesitation he also snagged a couple french toast sticks and a little tub of fake maple syrup.  Two paper cups of coffee rounded out his tray.  
  
He debated picking a different table, just to see what Andrew would do, but the only empty one had some sort of residue so he settled in the chair opposite Andrew instead.  Adding a sausage to the plate with the french toast sticks, he shoved it at Andrew, along with a fork.  Andrew opened the syrup and dipped the sausage in it with his fingers, never looking away from Neil’s face.  
  
Neil snorted and shook his head, turning his attention to his own breakfast.  It felt easy.  Natural.  He didn’t know how that had happened, how he had let it happen, but for the first time in ten years his mother’s voice was silent in his head.  A flicker of guilt died as quickly as it formed.  
  
“So where are we going?” Andrew asked as he finished the last of the french toast.  Neil looked up at him, lost.  “You did decide to move on.”  There was a question there, Neil realized.  
  
“Oh, uh, not really.  I mean, I’m not sure where I want to go.”  
  
“But you don’t want to stay here.”  
  
Neil shrugged.  “I can’t.  Winter, and all.”  
  
Andrew’s eye roll looked like it was probably painful.  The second Neil put the last bite of food in his mouth Andrew snagged the tray and brought it to the return spot.  Neil finished chewing and followed him.  They headed towards the lobby but before Neil could yield to the beckoning sunshine Andrew snagged his backpack and steered him towards the elevators.  
  
A middle-aged couple looked askance at them as they emerged on the fourth floor shoulder to shoulder, Neil being more or less dragged along behind a stoic Andrew.  Neil tried to aim a reassuring smile at the couple but a well-timed yank from Andrew had him stumbling awkwardly around the corner.  Suddenly Neil found himself laughing, imagining that he must have looked like one of those old-time cartoon characters getting hauled off stage by a giant hook.  Andrew stopped in front of the room door and glared at him, unimpressed.  
  
Neil shoved his key into the slot and let them into the room, still chuckling.  “What are we doing up here?” he finally asked.  
  
“Charge your phone.”  
  
“What?”  
  
“Your phone.  You have a burner in there still, right?”    
  
Neil nodded, wondering how Andrew knew.  But that was a useless question to ask when he seemed to know everything.  “Why?”  
  
“You think me wanting you to have a functioning phone is some sort of conspiracy?” he asked.  
  
_Well, yes_ , Neil wanted to answer but he clapped his mouth shut on his retort.  Keeping a cautious eye on Andrew, Neil slung the pack onto one shoulder and fished through the front pocket.  He tugged out the burner phone and its charger and plugged it in to the strip next to the desk.  “Now what?”  
  
Andrew snagged the remote off the dresser and settled on the bed.  “Once it’s charged, we’re going to the library.”  
  
“Why?”  
  
“Because this whole living on the streets thing is bullshit.  We’re going to find you a place to live.”  
  
Neil backed up until he hit the bathroom door; it crashed open and rebounded off the wall, smacking him in the ass.  Somehow that seemed apropos.  “No.”  
  
“Can you give me one good reason why not?”  
  
“They’ll find me.”  
  
“I know you’ve read all the public records, everyone who was after you is gone.”  
  
“Not the FBI.”  
  
Andrew cocked his head and studied him.  “And what precisely have _you_ done that you need to be afraid of the FBI?”  
  
Neil opened his mouth, whether to tell the truth or to tell him to fuck off he wasn’t sure.  Andrew interrupted before he could.  “You’ve had a few fake IDs, that as best as I can tell your mother procured.  You haven’t killed anyone, you may have stolen a few small things here and there but nothing major.  You’re not the one who took the money, and there’s no reason for them to know you have it.”  He looked back at the blank TV screen and pressed the on button.  
  
Neil found himself shaking and he dug his nails into his palms to stop.  None of this was possible.  He was getting used to Andrew knowing the impossible and staying by his side anyway, it was some sort of cruel cosmic joke.  Eventually it was going to be yanked away, and he would be alone again.  But this idea he was dangling, this idea of forming a life, of having a—a home; that was the cruelest joke of all.  
  
“Why are you doing this?”  His voice was steady, the anger drowning out the discordant clamor of other emotions.  “And don’t tell me it’s your job, I’m just going to tell you to get a new fucking job.”  
  
Andrew didn’t answer; he was staring at the weather channel that had come up on the screen.  Neil walked over to the TV and shut it off then stood in front of it, arms crossed.  Slowly, Andrew lifted his eyes to Neil’s, and there it was again: the flames, dancing in the golden brown of his irises.  Neil didn’t know how long he waited before Andrew spoke.    
  
“You shouldn’t have to live like that.”  His voice was level as always, his body relaxed; only the increased intensity of the fire in his eyes gave him away.  “Nobody should.  Nobody should have to be afraid to go to sleep.  Nobody should feel like their only option is to walk into traffic.”  
  
“Andrew…”  Neil didn’t know why his stomach bottomed out, why he could feel Andrew’s words resonating in his very bones.  It was as if Andrew had struck a tuning fork, and Neil could feel the truth humming in his teeth.  There was something Andrew had recognized in him months ago, something he was intimately familiar with.  Neil didn’t know why he had been blinded to Andrew until now.    
  
The flames licked their way into Andrew’s voice as he went on as if Neil hadn’t spoken.  “But it’s not your only option, is it?  So get out of your own damn way.”  
  
“Is that it?” Neil asked.    
  
“Isn’t that enough?”  
  
It should have been; it was.  Especially when Neil could feel with every molecule of his being just how well Andrew knew what it was like.  But there was something in the way Andrew’s eyes flicked down to his mouth when he was speaking that made him think maybe there was more.  Something that made the ground shift under Neil’s feet, just a little.  
  
When Neil didn’t answer, Andrew turned the TV back on.  Neil’s feet were itching; he needed to move, to run, to let the burn in his lungs and muscles bring back clarity.  He headed for the door.  
  
“Where are you going?” Andrew asked.  
  
“Out for a run.  I’ll be back in an hour.”  
  
“In that?”  Andrew pointed at the small sliver of window that showed between the closed drapes; it was spattered with water, and when Neil listened he could hear the pounding of rain.  
  
“Damnit.”  He thought about going out anyway; he’d run in the rain before.  When he glanced at the window again, he caught Andrew’s amusement at his dilemma.  Neil kicked off his shoes.  
  
Andrew had settled in the middle of the bed, but it was large enough for Neil to take an edge and leave a narrow gap between them.  ‘What are we watching?"  
  
“Let’s Make a Deal.”  
  
Neil eyed him warily.  “What kind of deal?”  
  
Andrew’s eyes were glowing with amusement instead of flames at that, though his flat expression did not change.  He pointed at the screen, which showed a stage with _Let’s Make a Deal_ emblazoned in large letters along the back.  
  
“Oh.”  It looked to be some sort of a game show, with bright colors and people in bizarre outfits yelling and jumping up and down.  It didn’t make any sense; he wondered if all the people involved were high.  But something about the noise and the lights and the idiocy of it all was mesmerizing.  Slowly, the need to move faded from his limbs.  He watched the whole episode, comfortable and warm with Andrew a furnace by his side.  The next show came on, a different set and a different host but otherwise indistinguishable, and soon it was all just a blur of color and sound and softness. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you all so much for the comments!! I love seeing everybody's reactions, and I hope you continue to enjoy!


	12. Chapter 12

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Neil succumbs to angelic peer-pressure.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> No warnings in this one. Thanks as always to @tntwme for the beta!

It was strange, Andrew thought, listening to Neil’s breathing even out.  Who would have thought that game shows were the key to domesticating a feral human?  He kept his eyes on The Price is Right while his mind wandered, wondering how he could find an apartment that was both safe and cheap enough for Neil to be willing to rent.  
  
Neil snuffled quietly in his sleep and rolled onto his side to face the room, pressing his back against Andrew’s side.  Andrew suppressed his flinch.  A small part of him twinged at the knowledge that Neil trusted him with his back.  He found himself cataloguing the wreck that was his charge: the shaggy self-trimmed hair, the tip of a scar peeking out from the neckline of his shirt, the overly sharp curve of his cheekbone, the jut of his ribcage sinking down to his hollow waist.  He looked healthier than he had a few days ago, but still needed about twenty pounds and a week of lying on a couch catching up on his sleep.  Andrew grumbled internally.  He could probably accomplish the former with enough time; the latter seemed unlikely short of a lobotomy.    
  
The TV shifted over to a syndicated episode of some crime show.  Andrew amused himself by imagining Neil’s story on scripted TV: a murderous crime lord father, dead mother, missing son who suddenly appears after being presumed dead for three years.  It would probably be rejected as seeming too improbable.  But Andrew found himself counting his breaths anyway.  For some stupid reason his fingers wanted to brush the hair off Neil’s forehead, feel the vital warmth of his skin.   
  
Before he could succumb to his traitorous hands, Neil awoke with a sharp intake of breath.  He nearly fell off the bed in his effort to get away from the unexpected body next to him, but when he recognized Andrew the panic left his eyes.  “I fell asleep,” he said unnecessarily.  
  
“No shit,” Andrew answered, then gestured to the window.  “It’s stopped raining.  Let’s go.”  
  
A different sort of unease crossed Neil’s face.  “Andrew…”  He rubbed his hands over his face, chasing away the last of the sleep.  “I’m not being difficult.  I honestly can’t.”  
  
“I don’t know, I think you manage to be difficult pretty effectively.”  
  
“No, that’s…God, you’re an asshole.”  All trace of sleep was gone; Neil’s fingers flexed as he paced in the small space.  
  
Andrew scooted off the bed to block his path.  Neil started to turn away, but Andrew snagged his collar.  “Listen to me.”  Neil stopped pulling away with a huff.  “You are creating obstacles where they don’t exist.  Get your shoes on and come with me.”  
  
The city smelled clean from the aftermath of rain.  Cars rushed past them as they walked, splashing puddles over the curb to soak the bottoms of their jeans.  Neil balked again at the entrance to the library; Andrew shoved him unceremoniously through the doors with a hand on his back.  When they reached the computer bank, Andrew dropped into a chair and pulled up a browser.  Neil turned to make his escape, and Andrew grabbed the backpack without looking and hauled until Neil toppled sideways onto him.  
  
“What the actual fuck?” Neil hissed.  
  
“Sit down and shut up,” Andrew muttered.  “I told you to stop making things difficult.”  
  
“No, you told me I _am_ difficult.”  
  
“Well then stop it.”  Andrew scanned the list of websites with apartment listings for Denver.  “Are we staying here or moving on?”  
  
Neil mumbled something unintelligible.  
  
“Staying in Denver, yes or no?”  
  
The anxiety coming off of Neil was palpable, but that was fine.  Patience came easier now he was dead.  Neil was either going to stay and make a decision, or he was going to bolt and Andrew was going to stop him.  Either way, they were getting this done.  
  
“Fine.  Yes.  For now”  
  
There were literally hundreds of listings even after Andrew narrowed the search down by price and size.  He could feel Neil building like a thunderstorm next to him and all he could do was wait for him to break.  The list of options that Neil was at least willing to see grew to around a dozen.  Andrew was about to close the browser when one listing caught his eye; he couldn’t even have said why.  He clicked on it.  Studio apartment over garage, furnished, quiet neighborhood, convenient to amenities.  He felt someone else’s approval wash through him; the Archangel, probably.  Or maybe Renee.  “Call this one.”  
  
Neil looked at it.  “There’s no price listed, it’s going to be way too much.”  
  
“Call it.”  
  
Grumbling, Neil did as he was told.  It rang three times and he was about to hang up when a voice came through the phone.  “Uh, hi, I’m calling about the listing for the studio?”  He listened for a moment, and then said, “Okay, yeah, how much is it per month?”  His mouth tightened at whatever he heard on the other end.  “That doesn’t…” he trailed off and listened again.  “Okay.  Sure.  Five thirty.  Uh, Neil.”  Snapping the phone shut, he  turned to Andrew.  “She wouldn’t tell me how much it was.  Said I had to meet her first.”  
  
Andrew shrugged.  “So, five thirty then.”  
  
“I’m not going.”  Andrew just looked at him.  “I’m not.  It’s creepy, she’s probably some sort of crazy person.”  
  
“We’re going together.  Whoever she is, she’s not going to do anything while I’m there.”  Another brush of foreign approval.  He felt oddly like a puppy being petted and bristled against it.  There was a touch of laughter in his mind and then it withdrew.  
  
Neil’s jaw had that stubborn set that Andrew knew meant trouble.  “Look,” Andrew said, “we’ll get lunch, we’ll go to some of these other ones, and then you’ll go meet the woman.  If she’s crazy, I’ll get you out of there.”  
  
“What are you, some sort of real estate agent?” Neil grumbled, but he didn’t look like he was going to run.  
  
“Yes,” Andrew said dryly.  “I’m a real estate agent who has followed you around for five months just so I can get a commission from a studio apartment.  Not the most efficient way to make a paycheck, but hey, at least I got to drown.”  
  
A laugh—a real laugh—bubbled out of Neil as he followed Andrew out of the library; the music of it was too brief but Andrew’s mouth twitched up in response.  He mentally shook himself.  He couldn’t let himself go down that road.  This was a job, nothing more.  
  
*****  
  
They stopped at a hot dog joint and Neil pulled out a map of Denver that he’d snagged from the bus station when he’d first arrived.  Somehow, Andrew had memorized all the apartment addresses and they plotted them out while they ate.  Andrew shoved his leftover fries at Neil and Neil barely hesitated before stuffing them in his mouth.  He didn’t want to admit it, but he needed the calories.  
  
The first apartment smelled like piss and cost a thousand a month.  The second was above a pot shop.  Neil wouldn’t even go in.  “I’m not going to live somewhere where I spend all my time with a contact high,” he said firmly.  Andrew jokingly argued that exposure to a drug that made Neil eat and lay around more would probably be a good thing.  At least, Neil was pretty sure he was joking.  The third was a candidate, small but clean and affordable.  Andrew vetoed the fourth after a few minutes of glaring at the supremely creepy manager who kept staring at Neil’s ass.  He also pulled Neil away from the fifth, which looked like it belonged in some horror film, in time to drag him to the one with the lady who had made Neil nervous over the phone.  
  
The house was spotlessly white, the garden neat as a pin.  Even past the peak season it was…beautiful.  Neil got stuck at the bottom of the herringbone walkway, staring at the deep red, orange, and yellow mums that lined it.  No weed dared show its face; even the mulch looked organized.  Andrew prodded him in the back and he shook himself and headed up the walk, blinking away the mental images of the macro shots he could take of the flowers.    
  
An array of pumpkins adorned the small porch.  He skirted past them and hesitated before ringing the bell.  Another nudge from Andrew and he swallowed down his stomach which had crept into his throat and pressed the button.  
  
Booming barks sounded through the door, followed by a stern command, then silence.  The door opened quickly, and Neil knew immediately he was right to be afraid.  The woman was a couple of inches taller than him, round, soft, and kind.  But there was an intelligent shrewdness in her brown eyes that he had rarely encountered in his travels.  This was not a person to fall for his lies.  
  
Had Andrew not been at his back he would have made his excuses and fled.  As it was, he took a deep breath and held out his hand in greeting.  
  
“Hi, you must be Neil,” she said, taking the proffered hand with a firm shake of her own.  “I’m Betsy Dobson.”  
  
“Nice to meet you, Ms. Dobson,” Neil said, falling back on the false politeness his mother had drilled into him.  
  
“Betsy,” she said cheerfully.  “Or Bee.  Whatever you prefer.”  
  
He nodded awkwardly and let his hand drop to his side.  She studied him for a brief moment, then looked over his shoulder at Andrew.  “Oh, um, this is my…friend.  Andrew.”    
  
They held a silent staring contest for a moment, then Betsy smiled and Neil felt the tension drain out of Andrew behind him.  Snuffling sounded from the region of Betsy’s skirt, and she glanced behind her.  “Oh, do you want to say hi, Kelly?”  She looked back at Neil.  “Do you mind dogs?”  
  
Neil shrugged.  “No,” he said, though in reality he’d had little contact with them.  
  
Betsy stepped aside and a large hairy floppy-looking dog waddled out onto the deck, wagging its fringy tail.  “Kelly, this is Neil and Andrew,” Betsy introduced, rather formally given that she was talking to a dog.  “Neil, Andrew; Kelly.  Please excuse her, she’s nosy.”  
  
That was one word for it, Neil thought, as the dog carefully sniff-inspected him before moving on to an impassive Andrew.  The wagging intensified, then the dog looked up at its owner and its face split open in a wide doggy grin.  “Oh, thank you for your opinion,” Betsy said, laughter in her voice.  “Now, back in the house.”  The dog sneezed before following Betsy’s gesture back inside.  “If I let her follow us she’ll shed all over the apartment.”  
  
Not that Neil cared; there was no way he was going to rent this place, with its too-smart landlord and opinionated dog.  But he followed Betsy obediently over to the detached garage and up the flight of stairs.  She unlocked the door and waved him in.  “It’s furnished, obviously,” she said, following Andrew into the open space.  “But if you have your own furniture I can find somewhere to donate this stuff.”  
  
One glance at her told him she knew he didn’t.  She had taken in his ratty clothes and overstuffed backpack and drawn all the wrong (right) conclusions.  He dragged his attention back to the apartment and tried to shove away the feeling of _home_ that threatened to overwhelm him.    
  
It was airy, brightly lit, the walls a soft gray, the trim spotlessly white.  A small kitchen provided a natural divider between the living area and a bed Neil could see at the far end.  The furniture looked comfortable; bookcases lined the wall underneath the windows, and framed prints of art he vaguely recognized hung above them.  He wandered through, trailing his fingers over the stools that sat up against the kitchen island.  In the far corner was a door that led to a small, aggressively clean bathroom.  Turning back, he saw Andrew standing, arms crossed, watching him with a smiling Betsy at his shoulder.    
  
“My niece lived here for the past few years, while she was in school.  But she just got a job in Durango, and it seems a shame to let it go to waste.”  
  
“How much?” Andrew asked, since Neil wouldn’t.  
  
Betsy pursed her lips.  “Four hundred a month, electric, heat, and water included.”    
  
It was ridiculously cheap, half of what much worse places were asking.  Whether that was a pity offer or something more sinister he didn’t want to know.  He opened his mouth to say no, to say that he’d think about it, to thank her and then flee, never to return.    
  
“I’ll take it,” he said.    
  
*****  
  
Andrew had been absolutely sure that Neil was going to live up to his history of idiocy and refuse the apartment.  If he’d still been alive he might’ve fainted from the shock when Neil accepted it instead.  He wondered if any of his colleagues had given Neil a mental nudge, or if there was just some part of him that had decided he wanted to live after all.  
  
Bee invited both of them in for hot chocolate and to sign the month-to-month contract.  When Neil politely refused the hot chocolate she heated up some cider for him instead.  Andrew sipped at his drink, savoring the way the mini marshmallows dissolved on his tongue, and watched as Neil absent-mindedly stirred his cider with the cinnamon stick Bee had dropped into it.    
  
“Will both of you be living here?” Bee asked.  Andrew looked at her sharply, but there was no judgment in her eyes.  
  
“No?” Neil answered, looking confused.  “It’s only one bedroom.”  
  
Andrew muffled his snort in his mug and Bee glanced at him, silent laughter in her eyes.  She seemed to already have a handle on Neil.  Kelly came over and rested her overlarge head on Andrew’s knee, and he found himself absently stroking her silky ears.  The dog was the only thing out of place in the house; he would not have expected someone with Bee’s obvious OCD to have a large drooly dog.   
  
“Um, I don’t have a job,” Neil said, when he reached the part of the contract that asked for an employer.  “Yet,” he tacked on.  
  
Bee nodded.  “That’s okay.  It can be hard getting settled in a new place.  What kind of job would you be interested in?”  
  
Neil blinked.  “I don’t know,” he said slowly.  There was more going on in that brain of his, Andrew could see the gears whirling, but he didn’t continue.  
  
“Well, I have a friend who owns a little grocery store,” Bee said.  “She’s always looking for help.  And there are entry-level jobs all over the place.”  
  
Andrew kicked Neil’s foot lightly when he stared a little too long at Bee; Neil swallowed audibly and then thanked her.  She responded with a smile and scooped up the empty mugs, rinsing them and then putting them in the dishwasher.  A few minutes later the papers were signed, Neil was four hundred dollars poorer and in possession of a brand new key attached to a keychain with a blown-glass bee on it.  Andrew watched Neil playing with it as they walked back to the hotel, rubbing his thumb over the teeth until Andrew was amazed he hadn’t worn a hole in his skin.  
  
Neil seemed surprised when Andrew didn’t follow him into his room.  “Where do you stay?” he asked, leaning against the door jamb.  “When you’re not with me?”  
  
“Headquarters,” Andrew answered smoothly.  
  
“The…organization you work for, they have their headquarters in Denver?  Is that why you wanted me to stay here?”  
  
“They have headquarters everywhere.  You could have moved on if you wanted, I didn’t care.”  Andrew expected Neil to duck into his room at that point, but he just stayed there, leaning.  Staring.  “What?”  
  
Neil glanced down before meeting Andrew’s eyes again.  “I move into Betsy’s tomorrow.”  
  
“Yes,” Andrew said, drawing the word out into several syllables.  
  
“So, what happens?  With you, I mean.  I won’t be homeless anymore.”  
  
Andrew shrugged.  “I’m not sure.”  He couldn’t decipher the expression on Neil’s face; he only knew it was one he hadn’t seen before.  “I’ll see you tomorrow.”  
  
“Right.”    
  
Andrew hadn’t gotten far when he heard his name and turned back.  “What?” he asked again.  
  
Neil hesitated, searching Andrew’s face.  “Never mind.  See you.”  This time, the door clicked shut behind him as he walked towards the elevators.  
  
The screen room was empty aside from the Archangel.  “Excellent job,” she said, as soon as Andrew entered.  “This is a huge step.”  
  
“Bee one of yours?” Andrew asked.  
  
“Well, she’s not dead,” Dan answered, “but she’s doing our work while still alive.”  
  
“What about Kelly?”  
  
Dan’s smile could only be described as mischievous.  “All dogs are ours,” she said, and though Andrew could tell there was more to that story he let it go.  He wandered around looking at the screens, catching Nicky as a teenage girl hugging a sobbing kid and a glimmer of Kevin-energy overlooking a tall gray-eyed man blushing faintly while talking to a cheerful guy in a soccer uniform.  “Everyone is doing well at the moment,” Dan murmured.  
  
“What happens next?” Andrew asked, watching Neil making dinner on his own screen.  
  
“He’s not out of the woods yet,” Dan said.  “Though this is a huge step.  He still needs to own his past.”  
  
“My plan,” Andrew asked, looking at her over his shoulder.  “Will it work?”  He had never ended up talking to her about it, but he was sure she knew anyway.  
  
She closed her eyes for a moment.  “If he cooperates, it will work.”  
  
“And then what?”  
  
“You will have earned your wings.”  
  
He glanced at hers out of the corner of his eye; they were still too bright to look at directly.  His own wings, and a future here.  He had never had a future, never really looked forward to one.  Even as a child, when all the other kids in school had talked about what they would be when they grew up, all the wanna-be firefighters and ballerinas and teachers and veterinarians.  He had never been able to imagine growing up, having a career.  A family.  What everyone else took for granted had been nothing more than a pipe dream to him.  
  
Now he was a semi-achievable goal away from his future, and he didn’t know if he wanted it.  Wings, and freedom, and his brother, and a collection of at least moderately amusing angels, and the only thing that called to him was one depressed liar with a savior complex.  It figured.  
  
He nodded at Dan and disappeared back to the hotel.  Neil answered after the first knock.  “You’re back!”  
  
Andrew shrugged.  “Headquarters is boring.”  
  
“I made some pasta,” Neil said, opening the door wider.    
  
A few minutes later they were sitting on the bed, plates of pasta with jarred sauce on their laps.  “To my new apartment,” Neil said, raising his glass of water in a toast.  
  
Andrew clinked his glass against Neil’s, ignoring the sudden pain in his chest.  It was what Neil needed, he admonished himself.  A home, and a job, and reclaiming his life.  That quiet ache under Andrew’s sternum meant absolutely nothing.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I can't tell you how much your comments mean to me, thank you all so much for reading! If you're wondering, Kelly is a Clumber spaniel (based off my own).


	13. Chapter 13

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Neil moves in to Bee's, and Andrew pushes his luck a little too far.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Neil struggles briefly with depression. Thanks as always to @tntwme for the beta! Any remaining mistakes are my own.

Neil couldn’t stop looking for Andrew while he ate breakfast, no matter how much he told himself he was being ridiculous.  There was something about Andrew’s solid presence that made this whole moving-into-an-apartment thing feel so much more bearable.  The fact that they had spent two hours the previous night mocking overly dramatic TV shows didn’t matter.  They weren’t…friends.    
  
When he couldn’t figure out how to delay any longer over his coffee, he went back to his room and nearly jumped when he saw Andrew lounging against the door.  “Get lost?” Andrew queried, that gleam of humor Neil was getting too used to seeing lighting his eyes.  
  
“Figured I’d savor a meal that you didn’t crash.”  Neil let them into his room.  His scant remaining groceries sat already packed in a plastic bag.  He didn’t even bother removing his backpack as he made one last sweep of the room.  Nothing.  
  
Neil had assumed they’d take the bus straight to the apartment, and was a little startled when Andrew hit the button for a stop well before theirs.  Andrew’s fingers twisted in his sleeve should not have been comforting as they headed into Target.  “If it were up to you you’d be sleeping on a bare mattress,” Andrew grumbled when Neil asked, “so you give me no choice.”  He led Neil over to the Home Goods section and gave him a tiny shove.  The selection of bedding was almost overwhelming; after gaping for a moment at the endless aisle, he grabbed the closest package that called itself a complete bedding set.  He moved to leave when Andrew plucked it out of his hands.    
  
“It’s a full size bed, not a twin,” Andrew said, shoving the bedding back into place.  “And do you really want pink and turquoise flowers?”  
  
Neil looked back at the package and blinked at the rather garish pattern.  “So what if I do?”  
  
“More power to you.”  Andrew shoved a different package into his arms; it was the same bedding in the correct size.  Neil grinned at him, and Andrew’s mouth twitched.  “Come on, I already know you have the most boring taste known to man.”  Neil followed him down to the clearance section at the end of the aisle, where Andrew found a comforter in a blue-gray pattern and a matching set of sheets for under twenty bucks each.  Next were towels, then a set of plates and bowls and cheap silverware and some basic groceries.  As they were heading towards checkout, Neil’s eye caught on a row of safes and detoured over.  There were a bunch of options, but only two that had both an electronic lock and the ability to place a padlock.  He grabbed one of those, a combination lock, and then a bike lock and added them to the cart.    
  
It all cost almost as much as his first month’s rent; he thanked whatever gods there might be that at least the place was furnished.  They dragged the bags onto the bus and basically got in everyone’s way until the stop a block away from Bee’s.  Andrew’s glaring warded off any complaints from other passengers.  Neil found himself smothering a smile more than once.  It was truly impressive how big a five foot tall menace could make himself when necessary.  
  
Hauling a safe and half a dozen bags up a city street in the middle of the day was an interesting experience Neil hoped he wouldn’t have to repeat.  It took forever to get to Bee’s house; it happened so quickly Neil found his breath catching in his throat.  The key slipped into the deadbolt and the lock snapped open easily.  Neil’s hands were shaking as he turned the handle.  Too much caffeine, he told himself.  Not enough food.  Something.  
  
Andrew didn’t bother with ceremony, dumping his half of the bags on the bed.  He futzed around in the kitchen while Neil set up the safe, using the bike lock to attach it to the plumbing under the sink in the bathroom.  It was just big enough to fit his binder, but Neil found his fingers clenching around it, unable to let go.  
  
“You can’t keep bringing that with you all the time,” Andrew said from somewhere off in the apartment.    
  
“Yeah.”  Neil closed his eyes and jammed it into the safe, then set the electronic lock and added the padlock.  When he finally stood his feet were numb from crouching, and he took a couple of stumbling steps towards the kitchen.  
  
Two sandwiches were waiting for him.  Andrew was sitting on the couch, flipping through a book he had grabbed off one of the shelves and acting like he wasn’t precisely aware of every breath Neil took.  Neil slid onto one of the stools and ate without tasting it, looking out one of the windows to Betsy’s back garden.  He hadn’t really noticed it yesterday, but like the front it was pristine, with flashes of late-fall color breaking up the green.  In the distance, mountains rose in a swirl of gray and white.  At some point he’d have to hike up there and see what sort of shots he could get.  
  
It struck him then, that he was here.  Planning.  Thinking in color.  
  
He looked over at Andrew, still reading.  “Hey,” he said.  Andrew glanced up at him, a question in his eyes, but Neil didn’t know what he wanted to say.  He just felt warm, all over.   
  
Andrew waited a moment, then got to his feet.  “Come on.”  
  
“Where are we going?”  Neil didn’t wait for an answer, just hopped off the stool and shoved his feet into his shoes.  
  
“Out.”  
  
He rolled his eyes but followed anyway.  It was surreal, stepping outside without his backpack; he felt lighter.  Too light, like the breeze coming off the mountains might carry him away.  He wanted to reach out and grab onto Andrew as an anchor as they wove their way through pedestrians towards the center of the city.  
  
A large glass building rose in front of them, and Andrew headed towards it.  Neil’s feet began to slow of their own volition; Andrew must have heard the change because he turned back.  It took a second for the letters on the front to make sense.  When they did, it was like a knife to the ribs.  
  
“You need to make your name change legal,” Andrew said, and Neil started to back away from his betrayal.  Andrew’s hand reached out and grabbed his collar; he strained backwards anyway, trying to turn, to run.  “It’s this or the courthouse, but if it’s the courthouse it’ll be public record.”  
  
“No,” Neil said, or maybe shouted; he couldn’t hear himself over the roaring in his ears.  Everything was blurry; everything was too sharp.  He couldn’t feel his feet moving, just himself falling away as Andrew let go of him and he blew away with the wind.  
  
*****  
  
Andrew sighed as he followed after Neil.  He had known this wouldn’t go over well, but foolishly he’d hoped Neil would at least stick around long enough to hear him out.  People were turning to look at Neil darting through the crowd.  “Yeah, there’s nothing suspicious about running away from the FBI building at full speed,” he muttered under his breath.  “Very smooth, Josten.”  He wasn’t overly worried about losing him; there was always that invisible line tugging him towards Neil.  Once he was away from curious eyes he disappeared and followed the pull.  
  
He found him in one of the parks that dotted the city, braced against the trunk of a tree, each breath sounding painful.  Andrew willed himself back to solidity and approached.  Neil straightened up as soon as he saw him, legs braced to run.  “Where are you going, rabbit?” Andrew asked, leaning against a trunk of his own.  
  
“I trusted you,” Neil hissed, barely audible over the wind sighing through the trees.    
  
“And I did nothing to break that trust.”  
  
“You…you…”  
  
“I brought you to the FBI building to help you get legit.  I didn’t turn you in.  If you choose not to do it, nobody’s the wiser.  But you’re an idiot for not at least listening to me.”    
  
Neil broke and ran again.  “Dumbass,” Andrew said, shaking his head.  Disappearing again, he followed Neil as he roamed around the city.  He knew eventually he’d end up back at Bee’s, given that all his stuff was there.  On second thought, maybe Andrew should have given him a day or two to acclimate.  But whatever.  This would work; Dan had told him so.  He just needed to find a way to beat that into Neil’s thick skull.  
  
It was after dark before Neil made it back to the apartment, pale and covered in sweat.  Andrew beat him there and materialized on the stair.  Neil hesitated when he saw him, then brushed past him and unlocked the door.  “Leave me alone,” Neil said, his voice broken in a way Andrew had never really heard it.  
  
Andrew followed him in anyway, pouring him a glass of water while he went and splashed his face.  Neil ignored the glass, drinking from the tap instead before dropping onto the foot of the bed among all the Target bags.  
  
“I looked into this.”  Andrew finally broke the silence.  “If you get a job, any job, you’ll need a social security number.  You can use the fake, but eventually the IRS will catch up with you and you’ll be fucked.  You can use your real one, at least that way you’re not committing a crime, but again the IRS will see a number being used that should belong to a dead man and they’ll come after you.  Probably the FBI too.”  
  
Neil said nothing.  His fingers twisted in and out of the handles of one of the Target bags, but there was no evidence he heard a single word Andrew said.  Gritting his teeth, Andrew went on.  “If you go to legally change your name, yeah, you’ll probably get questioned, but you haven’t broken any laws.  At least, none they need to know about.  You didn’t fake your own death and you didn’t commit any fraud.  But the FBI might be willing to fix it all off the public record, and a court would not.”  
  
After an eternity, Neil dragged his eyes up to Andrew’s.  “Get out,” he said.    
  
Andrew obeyed.  Or at least enough that Neil thought he did.  He watched, invisible, as Neil shoved the bags of stuff they hadn’t put away onto the floor and curled into a ball on the bare mattress.  He didn’t move, didn’t even blink, just lay there for hours until finally his eyes closed in sleep.  
  
There was too much noise in the screen room for Andrew to deal.  He walked right past it and didn’t pause until he reached the first cloud gap and sat on the edge, letting his feet dangle.  The sky was dark below; the land was dotted with flecks of light like fireflies, some clustered, some isolated.    
  
After a while Renee joined him, dropping gracefully into a lotus position.  “He’s okay,” she murmured.    
  
“I don’t care,” Andrew replied, tracking the movement of a pair of bright dots down below.  Her wings rustled at the lie but he didn’t yield and she didn’t push.  After a while she started to talk, telling him of her own charges, the times they’d listened to her prodding.  The times they hadn’t.  The one that she had lost forever, and the ones that were finding their way, step by step.  They sat there together until the sky below them started to lighten to a rosy pink, then he closed his eyes and willed himself back to Neil.  
  
*****  
  
Neil wasn’t sure exactly how much time had passed.  He also wasn’t sure how the blue-gray comforter had ended up out of its packaging and wrapped around him, or how the glass of juice and toast ended up on the nightstand.  Vaguely he remembered Andrew coming in; twice, maybe, or three times.  He definitely recalled Andrew setting a ham sandwich next to him and him throwing it across the room, Andrew staring at him with no expression, no flames or humor in his eyes.  That could have been hours ago, or days.   
  
It was bright in the room.  There were blinds he should have closed, but he had only gotten up to piss and suck down more water from the tap.  He could smell himself, the days-old sweat fermenting on his shirt; he would’ve been embarrassed, if he could have brought himself to care.  
  
Over and over it played in his mind.  Andrew hadn’t really betrayed him, if he thought about it rationally.  His logic made sense, Neil knew it did.  The lack of a valid social security number had been his biggest obstacle to settling down somewhere since he had taken his papers and his father’s money and run.  But the solution was tidy.  
  
Too tidy.  Too plausible, too real.    
  
Neil had never been real; nor had Chris, or Alex, or Elias, or Stefan, or Finn.  Even Nathaniel had never been real, a scapegoat for his father and a life raft for his mother, something for her to cling to while she ran.  All these years, he had told himself that becoming real was impossible.  Be a shadow on the outskirts or die.  Those were the options his mother had given him.  
  
Now Andrew was here like some goddamn fairy, ready to wave his wand and grant Neil a life.  But he barely knew how to exist; how could he ever live?  
  
He heard the door open and curled tighter in his blankets, feigning sleep.  Quiet footsteps sounded, and then suddenly the bed got heavier.  He flinched and reflexively opened his eyes, ready to tell Andrew to fuck off.  A concerned dog face greeted him instead.  
  
“Ugh, Kelly.  Go away.”  She ignored his command, nudging his cheek with her nose.  He put his hand up to guard his face and she flopped down next to him, shoving her head in his hand.  It was softer, silkier than he had expected.  His fingers flexed, almost against his will, and she groaned and leaned further into his touch.  
  
They lay there for a while, Kelly’s warm solid body pressed against Neil’s side.  There was no evidence of another human; Neil wondered how she had gotten in.  Whenever his hand stilled in her fur, she would nudge him with her nose.  It felt kind of like a warm, damp mushroom pressing against his skin, and by the fourth time it smashed against his neck he almost felt like laughing.  With his other hand he played with one of her feet.  It was massive, the size of his palm, seeming way too big for the stumpy leg it was attached to.  
  
“Why are your legs so short, girlie?” he asked.  Abruptly she rolled away and dropped heavily off the bed.  He wondered if he had offended her, then shook his head at his own ridiculousness.  There came the sounds of licking and chewing from somewhere.  He couldn’t see her where he lay, so he sat up to see what she had gotten into.  
  
Her fringed tail was waving gently as she scarfed down the remnants of the sandwich he had thrown.  The absurd desire to laugh hit him again.  “I’m less interesting than a ham sandwich, huh?” he asked.  She looked at him over her shoulder, eyebrows quirked in question as she gulped down the last hunk of bread.  Her nose twitched as she sniffed the air hopefully, and Neil shook his head.  “That’s my toast.”  
  
She rejoined him back on the bed, flopping heavily against him with a martyred sigh.  He ate one of the pieces of toast, gone soggy and cold.  His stomach rebelled at the prospect of the second.  Kelly was not so picky, her tail thumping rhythmically as she gobbled it down then licked his fingers.    
  
He stared at his drool-covered hand and did some mental math.  On the one hand, the bed had become an extension of himself, and he wasn’t sure he had any interest in getting up.  On the other, dog drool was disgusting and he didn’t want to get it on his comforter.  Kelly used his indecision as an excuse to swipe his face with her tongue, and that was enough.    
  
After washing his hands, he splashed water on his face.  Somehow that made his stench worse.    He checked on Kelly, who in the thirty seconds he’d been in the bathroom had passed out in the warm spot on the bed as if she’d been planted there, and then turned on the shower.  She was still there, snoring quietly, when he came out wrapped in a towel.  He doubted the dog would care about his scars, but still.  
  
She opened one eye to watch him as he got dressed, and as soon as his socks were on she hopped off the bed and bounded to the door.  He hastened to open it—dog drool was one thing, he didn’t need a puddle on his floor—and froze when he saw Andrew sitting on the landing outside his door.  With one raking glance he took in Andrew’s face, the calmness a facade over  the fire within, and he knew what he was going to do.  What he had to do, really.  Kelly smashed her whole body into Andrew’s side, nearly knocking him over, and gave him a drive-by lick on the chin before racing down the stairs to roll in the grass.  
  
“Did you put her in there?” Neil asked.  
  
“Are you done with your pity party?” came Andrew’s non-answer.  He made no move to get up, and Neil realized he was waiting to see what Neil was going to do.  
  
Slamming the door in his face and going back to bed still seemed like a good option.  He settled for, “You should have warned me.”  
  
Andrew cocked his head and studied him for a second.  “In hindsight, I suppose that’s true.”  
  
It was as much of an apology as Neil would ever get, and more than he expected.  “I still don’t want to do it.”  
  
Andrew shrugged.  “It’s your life,” he said.  “I’m just trying to make it easier.”  
  
The doorknob was digging into Neil’s palm and he forced himself to relax his hand.  “Are you coming with me?”  
  
The only sign of a crack in Andrew’s calm mask was the tapping of his fingers against his thigh.  “You won’t see me, but I’ll be there.”  He stood, brushing nonexistent dirt off his pants.  Neil’s stomach twisted at his readiness.  
   
“I don’t know what that means.”  
  
There was a wry twist to Andrew’s mouth as he turned to start down the stairs.  “You coming?”    
  
“In a second.”  Neil left the door open as he went back in, straight to his safe.  His original birth certificate and social security card were sealed between a print and an unused piece of photo paper; he used his switchblade to separate the layers.  It had been years since he had held them in his hands.  Now he folded them roughly and stuffed them into the pocket of his hoodie.  They would haunt him no longer.  
  
He turned to go, then hesitated.  Tugging his wallet out of his pocket, he pulled out his fake ID and the false social security card and dropped them on the counter, along with the several hundred dollars he kept on him at all times.  Swallowing down the sourness in his throat, he stuffed it back in his pocket and joined Andrew outside.  At the bottom of the stairs, Kelly paraded around with a stick in her mouth.  By the time Neil reached the grass, she had settled in to dismantle it.  She paused in her chewing to watch them go.  Neil thought he might be crazy, but he could have sworn approval shone in her eyes.  
  
The trip was shorter than he remembered, and he froze once again at the sight of the sign he had avoided for so long.  Andrew rested a hand between his shoulder blades, for once not pushing, just there.  Digging his nails into his palms, he took as deep a breath as he could manage and walked alone through the revolving door.  
  
A pleasant-faced young woman sat behind plexiglass at the information desk.  “I’m here about a missing persons case?” Neil said to her.  
  
“Who is the missing person?” she asked, looking up at him while typing on her computer.  
  
The ghost of Andrew’s hand still rested against his back, warm and oddly reassuring.  Neil closed his eyes, remembering months and years of roaming, of hunger, of terror, of being drenched with rain and suturing his own wounds under fluorescent light in a dirty bathroom.  It all felt distant, like a badly tuned radio.  Much sharper was the memory of laughing at a television and waking up swaddled in a comforter, toast neglected on a nightstand.  He opened his eyes and met the young woman’s.  “Me.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I can't thank you all enough for the comments and feedback! I'll be sitting down to reply soon, my work schedule has been crazy and I've been trying to write when I can. This is looking like it'll be 16 chapters total, these last 4 all a bit on the long side.


	14. Chapter 14

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Neil starts to make himself a home, and Andrew hits a milestone he didn't really want to hit.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I don't think this chapter has any real warnings. As always, thanks to @tntwme for the beta!

Andrew resumed form in the alley next to the FBI offices and was waiting for Neil when he emerged, haggard and brittle.  The questioning had not been that terrible, and Neil had done well; Andrew doubted any of the officers had noted the places where he fudged the truth.  When he had talked about burning the car with his mother inside, he had leaned back into Andrew’s invisible touch on his neck, but that was the only indication of how raw he was rubbing his soul.  
  
Neil saw him, and his face brightened for a split second before the light was swallowed by exhaustion.  He stumbled over a crack in the sidewalk and half-fell against Andrew, who planted his feet and let Neil lean on him.  “It’s done,” Neil said, no triumph in his voice.  “I’ll officially be me in five to seven business days.”  
  
Andrew snorted; he wasn’t quite sure why it was funny but a glance up at Neil saw the faint glow of amusement present in his eyes as well.  Neil’s legs gave out on him a block away; Andrew caught him before he could fall.  “You need to eat something,” he grumbled at him.  Pressed together like this he could feel every bone in Neil’s narrow frame.  
  
“No,” Neil said.  “I just want to go ho—back.”  
  
Andrew ignored the near-slip and half-dragged Neil to the bus stop that was a dozen yards away.  He pushed Neil into an empty seat and stood over him for the short ride.  Once they were finally back at the apartment, Neil wordlessly returned to his cocoon on the foot of the bed. Andrew pulled a box of mac and cheese out of the cupboard and got to work on it.  Cooking had never been his forte, but it was hard to fuck up mac and cheese.  He hoped Neil would actually eat this time.  This would be a lot harder to clean up than a sandwich, though he supposed Kelly might enjoy the task.  The spaniel was nowhere to be seen; Andrew wondered if he was going to have to ask Bee to borrow her again.  Convenient, to have a trained therapy dog as part of the bargain.  He knew Renee had a hand in all of this somehow.  He wasn’t sure how, precisely, but he was sure it was true.  
  
He presented Neil with a cereal bowl full of noodles and chemical cheese—well, shoved it in his face was probably more accurate—then wandered over to the couch to pick up the book he had been reading the other day.  One ear was listening for the crash of a thrown bowl, but nothing of the kind happened.  After a few minutes he let himself settle into the story of World War One soldiers recovering from shell shock that had every promise so far of being gay.  
  
A shuffling sound drew his attention out of the pages and he looked over his shoulder to see Neil, still ensconced in his blanket, carrying his bowl.  “You gave me too much,” he said, gesturing with his bowl as he settled on the far end of the couch.  “The box is like, four servings.”  
  
“The rest is still on the stove,” Andrew said, turning back to his book.  _And you haven’t eaten in a day and a half, you emaciated idiot_.  
  
“Don’t you want some?”  
  
“Unlike some people, I didn’t throw perfectly good food on the floor over the past couple of days.”  And eating was more for fun these days anyway, but Neil didn’t need to know that.  Neil’s cheeks were flushed as he shoved his fork back into his food.    
  
They sat in quiet for a while, only broken when Neil set his empty bowl on the coffee table.  The next time Andrew glanced at Neil, he had gathered himself into an uncomfortable-looking heap, his head resting on the back of the couch, feet tucked underneath him.  His eyes were closed, and Andrew shook his head, wondering how he could fall asleep like that.  Andrew toyed with carrying him back to the bed when Neil spoke.    
  
“It felt like you were there with me today.”  He still hadn’t opened his eyes and Andrew wondered if he was talking in his sleep.  
  
He answered anyway.  “I told you I would be.”  
  
Neil hummed and scrunched down farther.  “So you heard all of it?  With…about my mother?”  
  
“Yes.  But I knew about that already.”  
  
Neil was silent for so long Andrew was sure he had gone into a deeper sleep, but then he murmured, “But then why…”  
  
“Why, what?”  
  
But there was no answer other than a deepening of breathing.  Andrew figured he should probably leave, go up and report then come back and “borrow” Bee’s computer to start a job hunt.  Then Neil shifted again, rolling onto his side and pressing his feet up against Andrew’s thigh with a soft noise of contentment, and Andrew allowed himself to return to his book instead.  
  
*****  
  
The aching in Neil’s empty stomach dragged him into consciousness.  He fought the pull; he was warm, and safe, and relatively comfortable.  This must be an unusually soft piece of ground, he decided; soft and sheltered.  Not worth giving up for something as transient as eating, especially when there was only the faintest light filtering through his closed lids.  
  
No; he wouldn’t get up, he decided.  He would roll over and go back to sleep for as long as he could, until the light and noise of the burgeoning day forced him out of this spot.  Stretching, he froze when his feet bumped against something solid and warm.  Something that felt like a human.  
  
Instinctively he scrambled away, only to fall unceremoniously to the floor.  The shock woke him up properly and he blinked to find himself lying wedged between the couch and the coffee table, Andrew looking down at him with amusement playing across his features.  
  
“Good morning,” Neil said, for lack of something better.  
  
Andrew laughed; Neil thought it might have been the first time he had heard him do so, and he felt his face heat.  “Next you’re going to tell me you meant to do that,” Andrew said, “like a cat.”  Not waiting for a reply, Andrew held out a hand.  Neil took it after a moment’s hesitation and was hauled with ridiculous ease to his feet.  He found himself not wanting to let go for some reason, and forced his fingers to release.  
  
“What time is it?”  
  
Andrew cranked his head around to look at the microwave clock.  “A little after six.”  
  
“In the morning?”  
  
“I certainly hope so.”  Andrew rose from the couch, so close to Neil he could feel warm breath on his chin.  From this angle he could see the light blond tips to his eyelashes and the fine spattering of freckles across his cheeks, even in the dimness of the unlit room.  He wanted to photograph it, to put Andrew in the fresh morning light and capture the play of color and shadow over the carved planes of his face.  Or maybe in the warmer light of afternoon, making every highlight golden.  
  
“Can I take pictures of you?” Neil asked.  
  
Andrew looked up at him through his lashes, expression impossible to read.  With a small huff that tickled Neil’s neck and sent goosebumps up his arms, he turned towards the kitchen.  “Eat something.”  
  
“I don’t need to,” Neil said, just to be contrary.  His stomach gave a loud growl to contradict his words and Andrew shot him a wry look.  _Traitor_ , Neil thought, pressing a hand to his abdomen.  But the hollowness was more than he could bear, and he listened to its urging.  
  
Once the sky was light enough, Neil did in fact tug his camera out of his bag.  He set the backup battery to charge, and went out and poked around in Betsy’s garden.  Dew still hung on the edges of the chrysanthemum petals, and he zoomed in as much as he could, capturing the small beads of water.  At some point during his playing around, Kelly came out to join him and he took a couple of shots of her too, snuffling in the grass, looking at him with her droopy eyes, suddenly alerting to a squirrel.  It took him a while to get the rhythm of the camera back, calling back the muscle memory of adjusting aperture and shutter speed.  
  
When he was finished and Andrew had shoved more food at him, they went to the closest park and Neil went for a pathetically slow run around the perimeter while Andrew did whatever Andrew did.  At the end Neil found Andrew twisting himself on one of the swings; while Neil watched he picked his feet up and spun, leaning back and looking up at the sky while he passed baseline and twisted up again.  There was a strange sort of freedom on his face and Neil wondered what it was like to spin at the mercy of the swing’s chains.  If maybe it felt like flying.  
  
Darkness fell early.  Neil felt an unfamiliar calm as he settled on the couch, a pleasant heaviness in his limbs.  Andrew turned on the TV that was hanging on the wall and flipped through the menu as they ate.  A quick grin flashed across his face as he picked something.  “Here.  To further your reintegration into humanity.”  
  
The movie opened onto an arctic landscape, with men discovering a plane buried in the ice.  It flashed back then, to World War II.  Andrew paused it on the scene of a small man getting the shit kicked out of him in an alley.  “This is you,” he said, pointing at the screen.  “Pre-serum Steve Rogers.”  
  
Neil didn’t respond, pretty certain that was some sort of an insult.  He kind of liked the little man, with his awkwardness around the girls and his stubborn determination.  Though he supposed that was Andrew’s point.  Sometime during the modified Steve Rogers’ appearances on stage, Neil fell asleep.  He woke up to find himself tucked up in his comforter, Andrew sitting on one of the stools in the kitchen, reading.  
  
“It was you,” Neil said, suddenly sure.  
  
Andrew raised an eyebrow at him.  “I’m going to need a little more to go on here.”  
  
“All summer, I kept feeling like someone was…I don’t know, watching over me.  I thought I was going crazy.”  He sat up, rubbing the remnants of sleep from his eyes.  The world outside the windows was almost pitch black, just the faint glow of the city illuminating the night.  “It must have been you.”  
  
“Huh,” was all Andrew said.  He turned back to his book with an air of finality.  Neil detangled himself and went to sit next to him in the kitchen.  When Andrew ignored him, he nudged him with his knee.  He was rewarded with a glare he was sure sent most people running, but he grinned in the face of the fire in Andrew’s eyes.  
  
“It was, wasn’t it.”    
  
Andrew sighed and turned the page.  “You know I’ve been looking after you for months.”  
  
“Yeah, but I thought that was like, when I was awake.  When do you sleep?”  
  
“I manage.”  That wasn’t an answer, and Neil could feel more under the surface.  He grabbed a banana and offered it to Andrew; when he shook his head Neil peeled it, watching their reflections in the window.  Their phantom selves, in a phantom apartment, a desaturated version of this moment in time.  It felt like he could step through the window and end up in that world.  He wondered what it would be like, if it would be the same—Andrew the tether, he the kite at mercy to the wind—or if they would be something different to each other.  Friends, maybe.  Did friends sit at a counter and eat fruit at one o’clock in the morning?  It bothered him that he didn’t know, that some part of him longed to get pulled through that window and into that other world.  
  
He forced himself to look away.  Andrew was still immersed in his book, solid and real and here against all odds and logic.  There was something about him that made Neil believe just a little bit in magic.  It wasn’t just the fact that he had mastered some obscure method of invisibility.  He studied him, trying to figure it out.  
  
“Staring,” Andrew said without looking up.  
  
Neil couldn’t help but grin even as he ducked his head.  When he looked back at the window, he could’ve sworn reflection-Andrew was smiling just a little bit too.    
  
*****  
  
Andrew wondered if it counted as some sort of victory that after four days Neil finally put sheets on the bed.  Granted, it was at two a.m. and he fell asleep on the couch again anyway, but whatever.  He’d take it.  
  
Only the Archangel was in the screen room when he entered.  “It’s been a few days,” she said.  “I’m pleased to see he seems to be taking ownership of his life.”  
  
There was a sudden pang in his chest as he considered how close he was to his goal.  Considered leaving Neil.  He imagined it was similar for everyone, releasing their charges out into the wilds as it were.  Though Matt had been thrilled when his most recent charge had started their new job as an addiction counselor, and he had been reassigned.  Then again, Matt tended to be fist-bumping everyone over everything.  
  
Still, it was strange to consider what it would be like to be responsible for someone else.  Would the pull feel different?  Did each tug have its own voice, or would he always be looking around for too-sharp blue eyes, every time he felt it?    
  
Dan was waiting for a response from him, he realized several beats too late.  “We’ll see if it takes,” he settled on.  He turned to go, then turned back. “Why are there so few people up here?” he asked.    
  
“It has taken you a long time to ask that.”  She gestured at the open door behind him, and when he followed her he could see it: layers upon layers, filled with people of all colors, a rainbow of skin tones and wings.  He blinked and it was gone.  
  
“There are many souls that have joined us, and not everyone is compatible.  Coach decided to make many dimensions of heaven, such that everyone can be matched with the people they will be most content with.”  
  
He didn’t know what kind of judgment on him it was that this motley collection was the most compatible, but he nodded anyway and made to leave again.  The Archangel cleared her throat, and he stopped.  
  
“The others are waiting for you, up at the reflecting pool.”  Andrew didn’t know what that was or why they were waiting, but he nodded anyway.  “I believe you’ve earned your wings at this point,” she said.  “Coach agrees.”  
  
It was hard not to take a step back, then another; to keep walking until he was out of there and back in Denver.  His hands clenched into fists, and he forcibly relaxed them.  “What about Neil?” he asked, keeping his voice as level as he could.  “He is not as steady as all that.”  
  
“No,” she agreed.  “But you have guided him through the worst of it, in a way I had not really imagined.  It is not yet time for you to be reassigned.”  There was a knowing kindness in her eyes that he wanted to gouge out.  “He still needs you for a little while yet; but that doesn’t take away the magnitude of what you have accomplished.”  
  
“I’ve _accomplished_ nothing,” Andrew said, almost snarling.  It felt like the floor was shifting under his feet, like all the clouds the screen room was built on on were in fact nothing more than water vapor.  He wasn’t ready to be done with Neil; a small part of him whispered he never would be.  He shushed that tiny voice.  Eventually, he would have to move on.  Eventually Neil would want more than he could give, but not yet.  Not yet.  
  
Dan inclined her chin.  “I will honor your preference,” she said in a voice that went over and through him, “but do not discount what you have done.  You have resurrected hope in one who had been without for years.”  
  
“Hope is useless.”  
  
“What is life without a little bit of hope?  Is it not just a slow death of the soul in a living body?”  
  
“Hope without action is worthless.  I can hope for humanity to take steps to end climate change, but I might as well be setting fire to the oil wells.  I can hope for people to stop trying to take and take and take, but it doesn’t do a damn thing if I don’t fucking make them stop.  Don’t talk to me about hope.”  
  
Andrew all but bolted out of the screen room, only to nearly smash into Renee who was waiting outside.  Her face told him she had heard the whole thing.  “Don’t start,” he warned her.  
  
Renee’s smile was small and sad, but all she said was, “Walk with me?”  
  
“Are you going to drag me to the reflecting pool, whatever the fuck that is?”  
  
“No.”  
  
He studied her for a moment, but she wasn’t lying.  She led him along a different path than he had taken before, one with steeper climbs through the clouds and sharper corners.  They came to a gap and she paused, gazing out over the scene below.  After a minute, Andrew joined her.  The landscape below was endless mountains, snow and rock so high it penetrated the first layer of clouds, far below where they stood.    
  
It was strangely peaceful, or would have been if he couldn’t feel Renee thinking at him.  After a long stretch of charged silence, he finally gave in.  “Just say it.”  
  
“I wasn’t going to say anything.”  
  
“Right.”     
  
She rustled her wings; it reminded him of a cat flicking it’s tail, a sign of indecision.  He wondered if it was a conscious action.  “I was just thinking that you have a very limited idea of what hope is.”  
  
Andrew snorted.  That was not what he had been expecting.    
  
Renee’s smile was gentle.  “You seem to see hope as the antithesis of action.  But why act, if you do not hope?”  
  
He rolled his eyes at her.  “Is being pedantic a side effect of having wings?”  
  
She laughed.  “Perhaps.  But I believe you are thinking more of false hope.  Or maybe of hope as an excuse to push the work onto someone else.  That doesn’t change the fact that you must have some hope that your action will have the desired consequences, no?  Or why else would you act?”    
  
That wasn’t hope, he thought.  That was something else: determination, maybe.    
  
“The absence of hope is despair,” she said.  “The thing is, if you don’t have some degree of hope for your ability to influence outcome, it’s paralyzing.  You can’t act.  Hope gives you courage.”  
  
But all he remembered was hope making him passive, making him more willing to face down his own destruction.  He turned away.  
  
“All I know is,” Renee murmured, “you gave Neil courage when you gave him the hope that he could have a real life.  The strength it took for him to walk into that FBI office—”  
  
“That was his,” Andrew interjected.    
  
“It came from him, yes, but you planted it and watered it and gave it sun.  That is why you’ve earned your wings.  You didn’t give him a fruitless hope.  You helped him grow a tiny kernel of it into something real.”  
  
Andrew closed his eyes, feeling the weight of her words settle on his back.  It felt like a fetter.  
  
“Why don’t you want them?” Renee asked.  “The wings.  You’ve earned them.”  
  
He couldn’t say the truth, that having the wings was what was going to tear him away from Neil in the end, that he wasn’t ready to bear that loss.  He settled for a lesser truth.  “I don’t see the benefit.  Let me get used to them when I’m no longer responsible for him.”  
  
“Oh, but the wings make it easier,” she said, surprised.  “You can track your charges through them, you don’t need to keep coming up to the screen room or checking in with Dan to find them if they wander off.”  
  
Andrew arched an eyebrow at her.  “Why would I have to do that?”  
  
Renee stared at him.  “How else do you know where he is?”  
  
“The tether.”  She was still looking at him like he had an extra head or two.  “You know, that…tug.  I can always feel him.”  Even now, there was a draw across planes.  
  
Understanding flared.  “Andrew…,” she began, then hesitated, running her hands through her hair as she thought.  “That’s not…Most of us don’t have that.  We use our wings, or before we earn them we have to check in.”  
  
He didn’t know what she was implying, or what she was holding back.  It figured that even here, things worked differently for him than for anybody else.  He wondered about Aaron, if he had had the tether before he’d earned his wings.  But he knew the answer.  As much as they shared genetics, they had little in common.  Maybe he should just accept  the damn wings, and forget this conversation ever happened.  Then he could pretend Neil’s pull on him was nothing more than his job.  
  
“Where’s the reflecting pool?” he asked.  
  
“You don’t have to do this,” Renee said, even as she walked away from the cold glory of the mountains below.    
  
“I know.”  
  
Everyone was still there, waiting.  Like they had known he would give in, the bastards.  Once again he considered just letting himself answer Neil’s silent call, but he knew his charge was fine, still sleeping, still safe.  He nodded at Nicky’s enthusiastic greeting and Aaron’s calm approval.  Even Kevin looked…satisfied.    
  
With little fanfare, Dan seemed to glow, brighter and brighter, until Andrew had to close his eyes to spare his retinas.  Heat seared his back between his shoulder blades and he felt a weight settling.  This non-body of his seemed to welcome it; after a few blinks it felt lighter, stronger.  It was second nature to spread them and feel the power flow.    
  
But at the same time he was off-kilter, discordant; like a violin badly tuned.  He could sense everyone, not just his little group of crazy, but everyone beyond, in the layers of heaven and the Earth below.  The knot below his ribs that connected him to Neil felt stronger; not a braided thread, but a steel cable.  He wondered if he’d ever be able to break it now, without damaging himself.  Or Neil.  
  
“Take a look,” Dan said, gesturing imperiously to the calm, mirrored surface in front of him.  He stepped up to the edge and looked, extending the wings to their full span.  
  
They were glorious, these wings of his; layers of feathers in light blue near the junction of his body, transitioning smoothly to yellow, then orange, than a brilliant red along the top edge.  He fanned them carefully, and it looked like the flickering of a flame.  With half a thought, they tucked in tight against his body.  
  
“Damn,” Nicky said, breaking the silence.  “Those are some kick-ass wings!”  Everyone else jumped in to comment, even Allison.  Andrew spread them again so everyone could look.  They were enormous—each wing bigger than his body—and he wondered if he would struggle to make them disappear as he had struggled to keep his form before.  
  
“They don’t show up on Earth,” Dan said, as if reading his mind. Which, come to think of it, she probably was.  
  
Andrew nodded.  His head was swirling.  He wanted to fling himself into the air and feel the wind on his face; he wanted to hide the wings away and curl up under the blanket with Neil and never move again.  As everyone quieted down, Dan dismissed them, and he let himself follow the impossible tug back to Earth.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Renee's view of hope aligns with St. Augustine's: “Hope has two beautiful daughters; their names are Anger and Courage. Anger at the way things are, and Courage to see that they do not remain as they are.” (And yes, Cory, so does mine.)
> 
> Andrew is reading Regeneration, by Pat Barker. It's an incredible book, though sad and painful.
> 
> I'm going to sit down and answer all your wonderful comments as soon as I have time to breathe; I've been working crazy hours this week, and will next week too. But I've just about finished writing this (the next couple chapters will be crazy long) so the schedule shouldn't change. Thank you again for all the support, can't wait to see what you think of this one!


	15. Chapter 15

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Neil continues to fumble his way through establishing a life, and Andrew needs to make some decisions of his own.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Mildly nsfw, less explicit than the books. Let me know if you think I should bump the rating. Thanks as always to @tntwme for the beta! Any remaining mistakes are my own. Warning for excessive mocking of Battle For Los Angeles.
> 
> And, uh, I'm sorry.

“Nathaniel!”

The voice was unfamiliar, but Neil’s reaction was automatic.  He had bolted around the end display at the grocery store before he saw her, a woman picking up her wayward toddler, laughingly scolding him for grabbing a box of cereal off the bottom shelf.  She tucked him into the cart, smoothing his dark hair back off his forehead. Neil swallowed down the bitter taste of panic and reached into his pocket.

He pulled the state-issued ID out of his wallet without taking his eyes off the mother.  His fingers already knew the exact weight and size of it, and he ran his thumb along the edge until the woman rounded the far corner of the aisle.  Then he let himself look at it. His picture, with Neil Josten printed next to it. His name. His birth date. His height. All legal. He took a shaky breath and felt his racing heart slow. 

As he tucked the card back into its slot next to his brand new social security card, he shook his head wryly.  At least Andrew hadn’t been there to witness his idiocy. Spinning on his heel, he headed back towards the produce section, snagging the cart of oranges and beginning to stack them as he had been shown.  Nobody seemed to have noticed his behavior: Marco had his back to him as he restocked lettuce and Emily was at the other end of the broad aisle, talking to a customer about apples.

Ten days, he had been working here.  Ten days of learning names and quirks, of awkward conversations and gossip about people he’d never met, of observing the little hierarchy and settling into his spot at the bottom.  He still couldn’t believe that Karen the shop owner had hired him on without hesitation. Betsy denied having a hand in it but Neil didn’t totally believe her.

Marco finished with the romaine and moved on to zucchini, giving Neil a little grin as he set up across from him.  Neil suppressed a grimace and opened the crate of grapefruit. Marco was nice enough, but he never seemed to shut up and sure enough, he was off, babbling about football and the Broncos and tailgating.  It was easy enough to tune him out, only listening enough to catch when he was supposed to respond.

The urge to run was still crawling under his skin.  He soothed it by reminding himself there would still be enough daylight when his shift ended at three to go for a run in the park.  Andrew would come with him as he always did. Then they would eat dinner and talk about nothing, and slowly Andrew’s voice would charm the restless beast back into calm.

He wondered if it would ever die, this wandering creature at his core.  If he would ever learn what it was to have a home, not just a place to live. 

When he finished the fruit, Marco trailed after him as he went outside to gather carts.  Neil wondered if he had been assigned to keep an eye on him. Karen didn’t seem the suspicious type, but he couldn’t blame her.  Andrew might have forced him to get new clothes and cut his hair, but no doubt he still had the aura of his history hovering around him. 

As they finished with the carts, a flash of blond hair drew his eye and he couldn’t stop his smile when he saw Andrew leaning against the building, waiting for him.  Next to him Marco’s incessant chatter faltered and Neil glanced at him. “Is that your boyfriend?” Marco asked.

“Oh, that’s Andrew,” Neil answered.

“You should’ve told me, man.  I wouldn’t have gone so hard.” 

Neil looked at him in confusion, but Marco just waved a hand.  “It’s cool, don’t worry about it. I should’ve guessed, really.”  He checked his watch. “Better clock out.”

The walk home was quiet, save for the babbling in Neil’s head.  Even his run did little to silence it. He kept thinking about Andrew with his laser focus directed on someone else, his mouth quirked up at their stupid jokes, his hands on their skin.  Andrew had told him someone else had been watching over Neil before; did that mean Andrew had had a different charge? Perhaps in his quiet moments he was thinking about them. Missing them.  Or perhaps it was one of his coworkers; he had mentioned one of them once.

It wasn’t as if Neil had anything to offer him, other than a penchant for getting into trouble.  He’d kissed a few girls, but it never went past that. Partly it was his mother’s violent reactions when she found out, and partly it was just that he really hadn’t been all that taken by it.  And once he was on his own, ostensibly with the freedom to do what he wanted, he found that not to be a priority. The whole sex thing had never appealed to him; it just seemed kind of messy and unnecessary, a risky way to achieve a few moments’ relief.  Once or twice he had been offered shelter and more in exchange for his body, but he had always run.

Andrew had abducted Kelly as he often did, and the two of them typically kept to a mosey along the lower paths while Neil pushed his limits around the perimeter of the park.  When he got back to them, panting despite the crisp November air, Kelly was rolled over on her back receiving belly rubs from a collection of eager children. He stopped at Andrew’s shoulder, their arms brushing ever so slightly, and smiled down at the grinning dog.  “I thought you were going to take her for an actual, you know, walk.”

“We walked here, didn’t we?”

Neil laughed, and Andrew’s mouth twitched in a hint of a smile as he called a reluctant Kelly to her feet.  Once home, Neil reheated the not-so-terrible attempt at lasagne he had made the night before, watching Andrew make a salad and wondering.

“Spit it out, Josten,” Andrew said, when the microwave dinged and Neil didn’t move to pull the food out.

Neil shook himself and grabbed the dish, scooping out a portion for each of them and sitting down at the counter.  He picked up his fork automatically but didn’t eat. “Marco thinks you’re my boyfriend,” he finally said. Andrew just looked at him, making a rolling gesture with his hand, a silent ‘go on’.  “That doesn’t bother you?”

“Why would it bother me what your idiot coworker thinks?”

There was no good answer to that question, or at least not one that wouldn’t make Neil look like an asshole.  He shrugged and forced himself to turn his attention to his food.

After dinner Andrew found one of the stupid shows about aliens that was on the History channel of all things, and they settled down in their usual spots on the couch.  Half the time Neil fell asleep here, irritating the hell out of Andrew who always pointed out, when Neil awoke with a crick in his neck, that there was a perfectly good bed fifteen feet away.  Neil would agree every time, only to do the same thing the next night. It wasn’t like he meant to, not really. He just found it really hard to pull himself away.

Neil was mid-mock of the stupidly serious voiceover when Andrew produced a tupperware out of nowhere and popped the lid.  He held it out silently at Neil, who stared down at what appeared to be freshly baked chocolate chip cookies. “Where did these come from?”

“Bee.”

She must have given them to him when he brought Kelly back.  Neil took one and nibbled at an edge, the richness of butter and chocolate coating his tongue.  He found himself watching Andrew instead of the TV, still wondering, wondering. About what Andrew did when he wasn’t there; about who else had managed to occupy a corner of his mind, if they too had felt this strange magnet of Andrew’s personality.  About if this is what wanting felt like.

“Go to bed.”  Andrew’s voice startled him out of a doze.  He made a noise and curled in tighter. “Come on, idiot.  Unless you don’t want to be able to move tomorrow so you can’t do one of your stupid marathon hikes.”

“Come with me tomorrow?” Neil mumbled as he forced himself to uncurl.

“Don’t I always?” Andrew asked, guiding him towards the bathroom with a hand on his back.

“I want to go up the mountain before the snow really hits,” Neil said around his toothbrush.  “Take some pictures.” He practically fell onto his face on the bed before arranging himself under the covers.

“I’ll be there.” 

Neil fell asleep watching him; he seemed to glow in the dim light, calm and watchful and steady as the mountain.

*****

Of course, Neil would pick a hike that was steep as fuck.  The exercise junkie had packed water and granola alongside the camera in his pack; Andrew had added sandwiches and a handful of Bee’s chocolate chip cookies as well.  It still weighed far less than the overstuffed monstrosity Neil was adapted to, which meant he was fast as hell now that he wasn’t carrying two thirds of his weight.

Andrew kept up by sheer force of will.  That and occasionally employing his invisible wings to give himself a break.  Even with that assistance, he was relieved when they topped a crest and it looked like the whole of the Rockies spread out before them, white and gray striated caps rearing above a mantle of evergreen and yellow aspen.  Neil gasped and stared for a solid minute, barely even twitching when Andrew unzipped the backpack and pulled out the camera case.

Neil glanced down at the case when Andrew shoved it into his hands, surprise flashing across his face.  He unzipped it and switched the camera on with practiced ease, tweaked some dials with his thumbs while studying through the viewfinder then started clicking, clicking, clicking.  Andrew fished out one of the sandwiches and a bottle of water and sat down on a rock while Neil wandered around, getting closeups of pine trees and lichen, before taking in the whole scene again.  When Neil finally was done and ready to move on, Andrew took the camera and shoved the food and water at him. He ate mindlessly, still scanning the landscape with eyes that mirrored the sky above. 

They kept climbing, sometimes stopping for more pictures when something would catch Neil’s eye.  “Sorry,” he said, more than once.

“Why?” Andrew finally asked.

“I’m slowing us down.”

“I wasn’t aware we had somewhere we had to be, other than here.”

“But…”

There was something in his voice that sounded like buried pain, lived with so long it had faded into background noise that nonetheless influenced all that layered over it.  “Neil.” He was slow to look up at Andrew from his position crouched on the ground next to some sort of moss, his fingers skittering over the camera. Andrew waited. “This is not a waste of time.”

Even Andrew didn’t know if he was talking about the photos or something else entirely.  Either way, the slow dawn of Neil’s smile was breathtaking; Andrew needed to look away but found himself powerless to.  He reached out a hand to pull Neil to his feet.

“Thank you,” Neil murmured.  He was standing way too close, his breath a warm gust over Andrew’s cheek, and he didn’t seem inclined to change that.  Andrew told himself to back away, push Neil off with his shoulder, to move, move, move but it was as if he had taken root where he stood.  “Can I kiss you?” Neil breathed. It was impossible to do anything but nod, and it felt as natural as breathing when Neil closed the scant inches between them and brushed Andrew’s lips with his own.

It was the lightest of touches; a gift, freely offered; a question and an answer.  For an instant, Andrew let himself imagine following through with an answer of his own, burying his fingers in Neil’s hair, kissing him senseless until the sun was setting and they had to stumble down the trail in the dark.  But though Neil was his charge, he was not _his_.  Andrew had surrendered any right to anything like this when he had sabotaged that car five years earlier.

The first raindrops fell before he could corral his thoughts and Neil yelped and hurried to shove his camera away.  Before they could get fifty yards the skies opened; Andrew was grateful for the waterproof jacket he had materialized with that morning, but that didn’t prevent his pant legs from soaking through. 

Neil did not fare as well.  His jacket may have once been waterproof, but any such benefit was long worn off.  Yet he was laughing at the sky, head thrown back as the rain flattened his hair to his head and ran in rivulets down his face and throat.  He gave a whoop and started to run, grabbing Andrew’s sleeve on the way by. “Come on!” he shouted, breathless with laughter.

“I am not running down this trail,” Andrew called, but he followed anyway, half-jogging, half-sliding down through the mud and the rocks.  The rain stopped when they were halfway back, and Neil stopped as well, right at the edge of a precipice the trail twisted along.

“Look!”  Neil pointed over the edge, to where a gap between two mountain peaks was spanned by an enormous rainbow.  He fumbled for his camera and took picture after picture, and Andrew remembered looking over the edge of a gap in the clouds with Renee.   _Well done Nicky, indeed_.

Neil was shivering with cold when they made it back to the apartment but pulling his “I’m fine” act.  Andrew had been wondering if things would be different between them after that whisper of a kiss, if Neil would…expect something.  But as they sat on the couch to eat after Neil had warmed up under a hot shower, everything settled into their same familiar routine.  Somewhere along the way those lines had already blurred.

He blinked, and Neil was asleep with his feet pressed against Andrew’s thigh.  He blinked again, and the lines did not clear. His brain shouted at him to get out before he got hurt; some softer part of him—Renee would no doubt say it was his heart—begged him to stay.  To give in to the pull, to take Neil into his arms and make him promises he should never even try to keep.

Not bothering to step outside, he willed himself back to the screen room.  The pain of it was a reminder why he had long ago told himself to never want.  He deserved it, even if it left a deeper mark than a blade to a forearm.

Renee was there, with Coach and the Archangel.  All three regarded him with solemn concern as he took up his station against the door jamb.  “How long?” Andrew asked.

Nobody answered.  “How long until Neil can be on his own?”  He fought to subdue the rage in his voice while his traitorous wings flared against his will. 

“You don’t have to leave him,” Renee said.  She sounded as calm as ever but he could feel her emotion in his wings and he snapped them shut in warning.

“He is stable and secure now,” Dan said.  “He’s developing a support network beyond you.  But he is only two weeks past a major depressive episode.”

“How. Long.”

“Andrew,” Dan began, then hesitated before continuing.  “This is not a typical situation. Your bond is far deeper than the usual between a guardian and a charge.”

“No.”

“We can feel it,” Renee murmured, rustling her wings in explanation.  “We all know how you feel.”

“That is irrelevant.  I’m not going to tie him to me,” Andrew snarled.  No matter that the tether between them was pulling painfully tight already.  “He’s twenty years old. He has his whole life, and I am fucking _dead_ .” 

“Andrew…”  Renee’s voice was painfully sympathetic.  Andrew could feel Coach shifting behind him, ready to intervene, to make the impossible possible.

“No,” he said again, and he felt more than saw when the others sagged in acquiescence.  “Reassign me.”

“You need to tell him,” Coach ordered.  “Tell him you’re moving on, and then come back.  If you still feel this way, I’ll give you someone else.”

Andrew left without answering, for once understanding Neil’s constant desire to move.  He climbed through the clouds without paying much attention to where he was going. This form didn’t get tired, not physically, but when he found an out-of-the-way clump of clouds his legs gave out on him.  He hated this, everything about it: the weakness he had let himself indulge in, the ever-tightening leash that was Neil, the fact that something was choking him that felt suspiciously like grief. So he sat, digging his nails into his palms, into his knees, into the scars on his wrists, until the feelings started to fade.

Before he could force himself to his feet, movement in the corner of his eye coalesced into Aaron.  His brother sat down next to him, a careful distance between their bodies. Silence stretched until Andrew broke it.  “If you’re here to talk me into staying with Neil…”

“I’m not.”  It was all he said, but it was enough.

*****

Neil could feel it more than see it.  Brick by slow invisible brick, the wall between Andrew and him that had broken weeks ago was being rebuilt.  It felt like a stomach flu, nausea and aching muscles and a wish to go back to before it started.

He wanted to ask him why.  Why he had said yes when he meant no, why he was withdrawing instead of speaking.  Why the flames and humor ever-present in his eyes had been doused, so easily.

It wasn’t like anything had changed on the surface.  Andrew still picked him up at work; they still ate together and walked together, still watched TV and read together. He was still more of a friend than Neil had ever known. But Neil had never really understood what it was to want more.  What it was to _want_ , really, until now.

By the third day after the barely-kiss, Neil thought he was ready to go insane.  He found himself shoving carts back into their holder with enough force that he alarmed a little old lady, and getting a little too much satisfaction from the clunking sound when restocking cans.  Andrew was waiting for him when he clocked out as usual, but Neil brushed past him, unable to think of a reasonable greeting.

They were nearly home when Neil stopped abruptly; Andrew turned to face him, the yellow light from the street lamp turning him into gold against the darkness of the night.  “You didn’t have to say yes,” Neil said. Andrew cocked his head in silent question. “I wouldn’t have kissed you if I’d known you didn’t want to.”

“Is this really a discussion you want to have on the public street?”

“Yeah.”  To be fair, there were only a couple of people nearby and they were embroiled in their own argument.  And then the group at the bus stop on the corner. And in the convenience store behind them.

Andrew rolled his eyes and snagged Neil’s jacket sleeve with his fingers, dragging him around the corner onto Bee’s street.  “I would have said no if I’d needed to,” he said as they got closer to the apartment.

“Then why?”

“Why what?”

“Don’t play stupid,” Neil complained as they climbed the stairs.  He shoved the key into the lock with unnecessary force. “You’ve been…different.”

Andrew pushed past him and went to his usual spot leaning against the counter, watching as Neil shrugged out of his jacket and threw it in the vicinity of the coat hook. He missed, and it slid down the wall in a bedraggled heap. Neil pulled his attention away from that too-apt metaphor and met Andrew’s eyes.

“I’m being reassigned.” 

Three words.  Just three words, spoken with no emotion, and understanding cracked through Neil’s chest.  “When?” he choked out.

Andrew shrugged.  “They just needed me to tell you.”  A hint of humor flickered then died.  “Usually that’s not necessary, but I kind of fucked things up when I let you get to know me.”

“Tonight?”

“I don’t know.”

Neil crossed to him, wanting to reach out and grab him but settling for hovering a hand near his wrist.  “Don’t go tonight,” he whispered. “Just…stay. A little longer, I don’t know. I’m off the day after tomorrow, we can go somewhere.”

“It’s Thanksgiving,” Andrew said.

“So?”

“You told Bee you’d have dinner with her.”

Shit.  He’d forgotten about that.  “Didn’t we tell Betsy we’d both have dinner with her?  And that’s not until two thirty. We can go for an easy hike in the morning.”

“Your definition of easy hikes leaves a lot to be desired.”  But there was something like relief in his eyes as he turned away.

Somehow Neil fell asleep with Andrew’s fingers in his hair that night.  He wanted to kiss him, properly this time, not the spare hint he had dared the other day.  But Andrew was right; he was leaving, and there was nothing to be done about that.

The next day passed in a blur of last-minute shoppers, hysterics over turkey and cranberries, and running running running.  Even though Neil was getting close to his healthy endurance again, he was exhausted by the time the store closed. The walk home was slow and quiet.   _Their last walk home_ ; he pushed that thought away.  He would not ruin these last hours.

Andrew found some ridiculously cheesy action movie on TV and they watched it while Neil made dinner, laughing so hard at some of the terrible lines that he almost burned the taco filling.  Andrew paused the movie when Neil yelled out “We’re not dying here, Lockett!” as the pan started smoking.

“Maybe I can help,” Andrew said with mock gravity.  “I’m a vetinarian.”

Neil started laughing all over again as he scooped the meat into shells.  “She couldn’t even pronounce the word right. Like, seriously.”

“Isn’t that a class in veterinary school?” Andrew wondered.  “How to Pronounce Your Profession One-oh-One.”

“She failed.”  He sat down on the couch and passed Andrew one of the plates.  They finished the movie, then with Andrew looking over his shoulder Neil flipped through the photos he had picked up from Walgreens that morning.  The one of Kelly sniffing a pumpkin was set aside for Bee; the rainbow was as stunning as he could have hoped for.  He shuffled through several of flowers and crumbling brick, all fine—they’d probably sell if he ever made a store—but nothing special.  Then finally, he had his cactus photo in his hands.  It was still one of his favorites he’d ever taken.  
  
“What is it about that one?” Andrew asked when Neil paused on it, fingers hovering over the surface, nearly brushing it.

Neil thought for a long moment, trying to put it into words.  “Have you seen prickly pear?” he asked finally. Andrew shook his head.  “When it’s in bloom, it’s striking. It’s got these yellow or orange flowers that are kind of translucent, right?  And the fruit is this deep pink color, everyone loves it.” He looked back at his picture and couldn’t help but smile.  “But the rest of the time, it’s just kind of this nuisance. Everybody likes the big saguaros, and prickly pear is kind of the crabgrass of the desert.  But if you look at it up close, it’s so beautiful. I mean, look at this. The cactus needed a way to defend itself, but it didn’t have to make it so…elegant.  And nobody really appreciates it.” His voice got thick at the end and he didn’t know why; he glanced at Andrew, defiant words on his tongue.

But Andrew didn’t say anything, didn’t move for an endless minute, just sat there staring at the photo.  When he did finally move, it was to put his arm across Neil’s shoulders and pull him closer. Neil stiffened for a second before relaxing into the warmth and sturdy strength of him.  He didn’t know the last time he had been held. It was almost certainly by his mother, to hide him or shield him, only to be followed with a hard slap for putting them in danger. Never like this; never like he was something precious, something beautiful despite his spines.  His eyes burned and he closed them tightly. _I don’t want this to end_ , he thought fiercely, settling in tighter against Andrew as if he could keep him there by force of will alone.

He woke to the feeling of something brushing against his hair; Andrew’s fingers.  The sky through the window was just beginning to lighten with the promise of sunshine.  There were too many things to be said; they ate breakfast and got ready in silence. An hour later they were on a bus heading towards one of the trail sets just outside the city, Neil’s camera tucked in his backpack as always.

The trails were deserted.  They took their time, poking around, Neil taking shot after shot while the sun rose steadily in the sky.  This trail system was mostly flat, meandering through meadows that he bet were rich with flowers in the spring, and stands of proud trees where squirrels chided them from up high.  When they reached a gentle crest topped by a red rock, Andrew climbed up it and stood at the brink, the light hitting him in such a way he seemed to glow.

Neil snapped the picture.  Andrew heard the shutter and looked at him over his shoulder, a wry twist to his lips.  Neil zoomed in and clicked again, and again. He had never really liked taking pictures of people, but this was different.  This settled something deep within his gut. He would still have something to hold onto, tomorrow and next week and next year.

Betsy was ready for them when Neil shyly rang her bell, the photo of Kelly tucked into a large envelope.  He handed it to her and played with the sleeves of the sweater Andrew had made him buy while she looked it over. 

“Oh my goodness,” she said, gazing at it with wonder in her eyes.  “Oh my goodness. Did you take this?” He nodded. “It’s beautiful.  Seriously, I’m in awe.” She tucked it carefully back in its envelope and shooed them into her dining room, which was laid out with an enormous feast, way too much for three people.  He still found her too sharp-eyed despite her softness, and he sat back and listened as she and Andrew talked about books and music and the state of the world. It was strange to him, how well the two got along, but he thought he could listen to the harmony of their voices forever.

Just when he needed time to slow down, it seemed to speed up.  He had to be at work in sixteen hours, then fifteen, then fourteen.  When he closed the apartment door behind them and looked at Andrew, he didn’t know what to do.  Every inch of him felt raw and he knew Andrew could see it on his face.

“Andrew—” he started.  But Andrew was already moving, backing him up against the door.  All Neil wanted to do was wrap his arms around him until they were sharing breath.  He settled for grabbing Andrew’s sleeve and pulling him closer, feeling the heat of his body from his shoulders to his toes.

“Tell me no,” Andrew whispered in a desperate command.

“What if I don’t want to?  What if…” He broke off. A thousand words he couldn’t say swarmed through his brain like locusts and he twisted his fingers harder into Andrew’s sleeve.

“You’re an idiot,” Andrew said, and then his mouth was on Neil’s. 

Neil had forgotten, or had never known, what desire could feel like, taste like.  His blood was on fire; had he ever thought Andrew could not burn him? He wanted nothing more than to go up in flames like this, until all that was left of him was ash and the memory of Andrew’s tongue in his mouth and name on his lips.

When Andrew pulled away he drew from Neil a frantic whine, but he didn’t go far.  The feel of lips dragging against his jaw then down his neck just made Neil burn hotter.  Broad calloused hands slipped under his shirt, tracing scars with a reverence that should have been reserved for some sort of holy ritual.  His body arched under the touch of its own accord. He fought the unfamiliar surge of need, but when Andrew murmured, “Yes or no,” against his skin he could only gasp out _yes yes yes_.

Afterwards Neil lay boneless and sated, every imaginable ounce of pleasure wrung out of him by Andrew’s hands and mouth.  He wanted to return the favor, but there was something in those golden eyes that stopped him from offering. Instead he settled for tracing Andrew’s face, memorizing the feel of his nose, his cheekbones, the soft-rough stubble on his jaw, the smoothness of his lips. Eventually he fell asleep for the hundredth time under Andrew’s watchful eyes, this time with one of Andrew’s hands sprawled across his abdomen.

When he awoke to the pale light of dawn, the room was empty and cold.  Andrew was gone.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> It'll be okay. I promise.
> 
> I'm so far behind on responding to comments but I'm trying! I planned on wrapping this up in one more chapter but the chapter is twice as long as any of the others so I'm probably going to split it into two.


	16. Chapter 16

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Andrew works on adapting to his reassignment, and Neil works on adapting to life as a functional human.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks again to @tntwme for the beta! Warning for Harry Potter spoilers??

Only Coach and the Archangel were there to watch Andrew’s destruction. 

“Reassign me,” he gasped, clawing for his dignity.  Coach just looked at him. At him and through him, though in this moment it was impossible to keep himself opaque even to less penetrating eyes.  Pain made him as translucent as glass. It always had, but there had never before been anyone willing to look.

“You may choose,” Dan said, gesturing to the wall behind her.

“Pick for me.”  When she didn’t move, he turned to Coach.  “Pick for me. You did it before.”

Coach crossed his arms, the flames flaring up to nearly obscure his face.  “I did not. There were a thousand you could have chosen, but only one that drew you in.”

“Bullshit.”  Though he remembered the way he had been unable to look away from that screen, even while Kevin had been fretting over its occupant.  The pull then had been but a gossamer thread, a tiny fraction of what he felt now.

Coach raised an eyebrow at him.  Andrew knew he should probably apologize, but he could barely think over the rending screams in his chest.  “If you insist on doing this, you should pick for yourself.”

“You told me you’d reassign me.  You said I had to tell him I was leaving, and I did.  Hold up your end.”

“It will not make this easier.  You will not feel less. Neil will always be your heart.”

 _I know_.  He wasn’t even sure if he said it aloud, or just thought it.  His eyes strayed one last time to his screen, where Neil’s questing hand was reaching out across empty sheets.  He blinked, then squeezed his eyes shut. “Just do it.”

There was a deep sigh, then movement.  Andrew opened his eyes to see the Archangel holding out a screen.  He reached out automatically, and his brain flooded with images; when he focused on them the anguish was easier to ignore.  Before he was sent, Coach reached out and touched his shoulder with a fiery hand that did not burn.

“When you are ready, you can go back to him.”

“He does not need me.” 

It was Dan who answered.  “That is why we will allow you to return in a different capacity.”

Andrew’s hands clenched hard enough to hurt.  Returning was not part of the plan; it never had been.   While Neil might be an idiot, surely he would get over whatever infatuation he might have that was no doubt born more of gratitude than anything else.  Andrew closed his eyes and let himself drift towards his new charge.

*****

Neil was pushing it for time.  He checked his watch and sped up, the snow crunching under his soles.  This stupid trail kept calling him back, and he had paused too long at the rock, remembering a halo of golden hair.

As he made his way back, he heard a crashing rustle in the woods and froze.  Neil had his camera at the ready, and caught the instant that the elk broke through into the meadow, head held high under the enormous rack of antlers that adorned it.  The creature froze and watched him for a long moment, then turned and walked haughtily away towards the stream he had passed, the only unfrozen water Neil had seen. Once the elk had disappeared over the slope, Neil let out a shaking breath.  “Damn.”

He stopped and took photos of the hoofprints in the snow, then hopped over the faint trail.  Even though nobody else would probably ever see it, he couldn’t fathom disrupting that simple perfection.  It was tempting to pause and look at the captured images, but another glance at his watch had him stuffing the camera back and shifting into a sprint.  The bus was closing its doors as he ran to the stop but the driver saw him and waited, smiling at his panted thanks.

Leaning back into the worn seat, Neil turned the camera screen on and flipped through the pictures.  Shooting in snow was always kind of a pain in the ass, but at least he’d remembered to change the white balance so it didn’t all look blue.  There were a few good captures in there, but only when he got to the elk did his breath catch. Something in the bull’s steady demeanor reminded him of Andrew, and he felt the now-familiar ache under his ribs.  

Just enough time to stop at the apartment and change.  He had volunteered to work the Christmas Eve shift; it wasn’t like he had anything better to do.  Betsy’s gift was already wrapped, and Andrew…he had no way of sending Andrew a gift, even if he had known what to give him.  He stopped on the way out to touch a finger to the strangely beautiful little glass cat figurine that had appeared on his doorstep that morning.  No note, no return address, but he knew who it was from. Every Friday, a letter came for him; well, really a post-it note stuck to the inside of an envelope.  The first one had been bright green and said, _Eat a vegetable and get some sleep.  On the bed, not the couch, you fucking idiot_ in a blocky hand.  He had curled up on the couch in defiance, grinning to himself about what Andrew’s reaction would have been.  Then, it was a neon yellow _I like the mountains better than the ocean_ and Neil was left wondering where Andrew was assigned.  Last week, it had been an orange, _Yer a wizard, Neil_ .  He’d stared at that one for a solid minute before flipping it over and seeing on the back, _Read Harry Potter you deprived child._  Then the cat had arrived, because when Neil had told Andrew his favorite animal was the fox, Andrew had confessed he was a cat person.

The store was a zoo where all the customers had been turned into angry crocodiles.  Emily had him laughing in the back as she imitated frantic customers snapping at the staff.  It may have been the only thing that kept him from snapping back. The last thing he needed was to lose this job because every nerve was still exposed.  He ended up walking home with a big bag full of fruit that Karen had shoved into his arms, along with some candy bars that she remembered he used to buy for Andrew. The candy went into the cupboard where it would never again see the light of day, and he settled in to eat with a library copy of _Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets_ open on the counter.

There was some sort of irony to waking up to the gentle fall of snow on Christmas.  Neil had never cared about the holiday, or any others, other than strangers tended to be a little bit more generous when he was on the street.  That didn’t mean he didn’t know that most people dream of a white Christmas. He watched it fall through the window, filling in the thawed patches on the lawn, and wondered if it was snowing wherever Andrew was.

Betsy had invited him over for brunch.  He let himself in, calling hello to her and Kelly as he knocked the snow off his boots and bent to take them off.  Kelly bounded into the entrance hall and snuffed his hair while he untied his boots, then looked at the door expectantly for a minute.  “He’s not coming,” Neil muttered as he did every time, bending down to rub her ears. She looked at him apologetically, gave his face a cursory lick, and trotted back into the kitchen.  Neil put the presents next to the tree that was decorated in white and gold and followed her.

Brunch was, of course, magnificent and far too much.  Betsy’s niece Liza had driven down for the holiday, every bit as round-faced and intelligent as Betsy herself.  Then several of Betsy’s friends dropped by until the whole house felt like a train station with better food and minus the odor of stale urine. 

Neil sat on the chair that had become _his_ chair over the past month, through shared dinners and discussions of photography and art.  He watched more than listened as everyone chattered and hugged and toasted each other with some sort of mix of sparkling wine and juice.  There was a dull ache under his sternum and he blinked hard against the stinging in his eyes.

Hours passed before the house thinned out.  Finally just Neil and Liza were left, bringing dishes into the kitchen while Betsy loaded up the dishwasher.  When they were done he moved to slip out the door but Betsy stopped him with a hand on his shoulder. “Not so fast, kiddo.”  Liza laughed and went to the tree to dig out the boxes that sat underneath.

She presented Neil with a small flat box.  He held it on his lap, palm pressed flat against the top with its fancy bow.  Betsy watched him for a moment before turning to her own small stack, giving him some privacy while he memorized the feel of the stiff paper under his fingers.  She gushed over the quartet of photos he had framed for her, the best of the macro shots of her garden. He wished he had been able to think of something else, something more, but then he looked at the brightness threatening to spill over in her eyes and felt himself settle.

Liza was an unknown quantity for him; he had framed an eight-by-ten print of the rainbow photo, one of the few he liked that he knew would have universal appeal. Betsy and Liza had given each other books and scarves and gloves, and he couldn’t help his soft smile as he watched their easy affection. Even Kelly had gotten presents, and carried around Neil’s gift of a stuffed squeaky dinosaur with a preternaturally solemn expression that made everyone laugh.

Finally they turned to him, expectant.  He didn’t understand his own reluctance as he undid the bow, then carefully slipped his finger under the tape.  Inside the box was a folded piece of paper; he unfold it and read it twice before looking up at Bee. “A photography class?”

She nodded.  “I talked to Karen, she said it’s no problem to set your schedule so you have that shift off.  And James, the instructor, is a friend of mine. I showed him that picture you took of Kelly, and he suggested his advanced class.  Actually, what he said was, ‘I’m not sure I have much I can teach that young man, but I look forward to trying.’”

Neil swallowed down the lump in his throat.  It was so much…too much. He didn’t know how much time had passed before he was able to look up at Betsy and Liza. The latter was tactfully looking at her own pile of presents, but Bee’s smile was knowing. “Merry Christmas, Neil,” Bee said softly.

“Merry Christmas.”  The simple statement felt incomplete.  Wasn’t it supposed to end with “And a happy New Year”?  Neil thought he remembered that, some sort of echo from his childhood.  He thought about the year that had passed, the dullness that had swamped him and the brightness that had pulled him free.  He thought about rushing water and a crowded nightclub, of cactus and musicians picking guitar strings on park benches, of flame-filled eyes he couldn’t explain and kisses he couldn’t forget.  And he wondered if the New Year—if any year—would ever make him feel like this one had.

*****

Andrew was tired of fluctuating between boredom and being so damn sick of his charge’s parents he was ready to dump them both in the Hackensack River. 

Every small step forward Robin made—every quiet mention of a friend, every shy suggestion of a trip to the library, every request to walk the family’s pug—was met with a list of reasons as to why that was a bad idea.  She might have a panic attack, she might have a flashback, she might, she might, she might. And every time Robin would nod and shrink a little bit farther into herself, and the world would sink back into quiet.

There was nobody to verbally spar with, nobody who saw things for their peculiar beauty and made him see it too. So now here he was, in the empty Existential Crisis Center, looking for shit to throw just to hear the crash and finding not a fucking thing. The desk drawers were empty, even the pad and marker were gone, and the desk itself was fixed to the floor in some way.  He vented his spleen for a moment by slamming all the drawers in as hard as he could, but they still closed too quietly and he ended up taking a swing at the door jamb instead.

Even that wasn’t satisfying; there was a jolt but no pain, and he cursed at length before throwing the door open.  Renee stood at the bottom of the step, waiting. “What,” he spat at her.

“I was coming to say hello,” she said, though he could sense the layers underneath her words in his wings.  He refused to be ashamed, and snapped his wings open to shake the feeling free. “I take it the holiday did not go well?”

“Where’s Coach?  Blowing out birthday candles with Jesus?”

Renee laughed.  “His birthday’s in September.”

Andrew looked down towards Earth, though all he could see was cloud.  “Somebody ought to tell those assholes down there that.”

She let that slide, studying him with her damned gentle concern.  “What did you want to ask Coach? Can I help?”

Andrew moved to brush past her, hating the insight the wings gave everyone into his emotions, and vice versa.  She stopped him short with, “Did you check on Neil? It’s his first Christmas as himself.”

As if he didn’t know that.  As if he hadn’t felt the longing pull through the bond, hard enough that he almost couldn’t fight it from New Jersey.  Bee had promised Andrew before he left that she would invite Neil to spend Christmas with her, and he trusted her not to break that promise.  Neil was safe, he would be fine. Yet he found himself following Renee back into the screen room nonetheless.

Neil was fine, as Andrew had predicted.  Somewhere along the way he had finally bought himself that laptop Andrew had tried to bully him into getting; he was fiddling around with it while Andrew watched.  Eventually, he closed it gently, his eyes going to the glass cat that was perched on the bookcase near the door. He shook his head and pulled a book off the coffee table; Harry Potter, Andrew noted with satisfaction.  But after a few minutes Neil slammed that shut and went digging around in the kitchen.

He found a sharpie and a piece of scrap paper and scribbled something down.  He glanced around the apartment, as if looking for the best place to put it, then ended up setting it on the coffee table.   _Merry Christmas and thank you for the cat_.  Then he flopped back on the couch and picked up his book.

Andrew shook his head, suppressing the smile that wanted to betray him, and disappeared back to New Jersey without another word to Renee. 

The night after Neil received his next note— _glad you finally got a computer of your own dumbass_ on a nice bright green—Andrew found himself in the screen room, looking not at Robin’s screen but Neil’s.  A new pad of paper sat on the coffee table. Scrawled across it was _how is it fair you know everything about me and I know nothing about you_.

It took a couple of days for Andrew to decide how to respond.  Finally he settled on, _I was in foster care until I was 12,_ on the stupid orange he hated.  He then spent his day following Robin’s mother around, trying not to let her fluttery-handed uselessness get under his skin like a familiar itch.  A large part of him wanted to ask her why if her daughter who had been kidnapped could work on recovery, she couldn’t do the same. Instead he watched and considered.

Neil was asleep when Andrew made it up to the screen room.   _Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban_ was on the nightstand, and there was a sheet on the bed next to him that asked, _what happened?_  

Andrew tapped the pen against the pink post-it note before writing, _Sirius Black was framed by his friend for the death of the Potters and has been wrongfully imprisoned for 12 years_ .   He couldn’t help but chuckle to himself as he pictured Neil’s face when he read it. 

The next night, he laughed out loud when he saw Neil’s response crammed onto the small pad of paper:   _Ok fuck you I just speed read this whole book to figure out what friend and seriously Scabbers??  But what happened to have you leave foster care at 12? Adopted?_  

 _Became a different type of ward of the state_ , Andrew wrote back.  Then he flipped the post-it note over and added, _Scabbers is a rat bastard_. 

Another day, another persona.  He found himself working more on Robin’s parents than Robin herself.  The most effective seemed to be when he took on the form and mannerisms he had learned from Bee and pretended to be a fellow parent waiting for their kid at therapy.  Slowly Andrew-as-Bee was pulling Erin Cross out of her shell. It grated on him to feign sympathy when all he could see were the ways she kept punching her daughter down with good intentions, but he called on his understanding of Renee and somehow made it work.

It was a relief to make it up to the boisterous screen room each night, ignoring all the others in favor of checking Neil’s screen.   _That was the worst pun ever.  
_

Then the next day: _Are you telling me I was consorting with a criminal?_  

Andrew snorted and wrote back, _Like that’s anything new for you_.

There was nothing on Neil’s pad the following night, nor the next.  Neil himself seemed to be doing okay, futzing around on the computer and going to bed far too late.  Andrew dragged his attention back to the Archangel to give his report, but before he left he indulged himself in a brush of his fingers against Neil’s screen. 

Out of the rapid sequence of images that flashed through his mind, one stood out: Neil, crumpling a paper and throwing it in the trash, a paper that read _is that why you feel like home?_   

*****

It was with some trepidation that Neil made his way up to the front of the classroom while his fellow students filed out.  Professor Rhemann smiled at him and beckoned him closer. He clenched the flash drive harder in his fist before forcibly relaxing his hand and holding the drive out.  Two months into the course and Rhemann had given him no reason to fear him, other than his age and gender. This internship was a golden opportunity he was being offered, and he shouldn’t sabotage it right off the bat just because he was a coward.

Rhemann called up the images and began scrolling through, commenting here and there on lighting, perspective, and area of focus.  “You definitely see things differently than I do,” he murmured, pausing on one of the shots Neil had taken in New Mexico. “There’s a bleakness to your shots, even the flowers.”

“I’m…sorry,” Neil said, not sure how he was supposed to respond.

“Don’t be,” Rhemann murmured, going to the next one.  “It’s your artistic vision, and these are beautifully captured.  I just have always found it intriguing how much our emotional state tends to color something that should be as objective as a photograph.”

It was hard not to bristle at that; Neil had never felt so laid bare before in his life, except maybe with Andrew.  He swallowed down his retort and listened as Rhemann continued his review.

After a few dozen photos, Rhemann asked, “Do you ever photograph people?”

Neil shrugged.  “Not really. I have a couple times, but people are not as interesting to me.”

Rhemann looked up at where Neil was standing at his shoulder.  “But people have so many stories to tell.”

“Yeah but they lie.  Flowers and landscapes and animals, they’re honest with you.  People, as soon as they know you’re taking their picture, all their stories get…swallowed up, and you just get whatever they want to project.”

“Isn’t that a part of the story though?” Rhemann asked, his eyes focused intently on Neil’s face.  “The gift of an artist, whether they’re a painter or a photographer, is to show the stories the subject wants to keep hidden.”

Neil hummed as he thought of the half-dozen shots he had taken of Andrew, the lack of expression on the surface and the layers buried underneath.  When Rhemann reached the first of the two Neil had included, he paused and blew it up a bit larger, so it filled the oversized screen.

“Now this, this is what I mean.”  It was the close-up of Andrew looking at Neil over his shoulder, when he had first heard the camera click.  He looked almost annoyed at Neil’s audacity, but there was something in his eyes and mouth that betrayed him.  Now when Neil looked at it all he could think of was the desperation of that mouth just a few hours later, the need in those eyes.  Maybe Rhemann had a point.

After several minutes, Rhemann clicked on the next one, Andrew standing up on the red rock, the shallow valley laid out beyond him.  “I don’t know what happened with that exposure,” Neil said. “I only included it because I liked the framing.”

Rhemann cocked his head as he studied it, the strange haze that surrounded Andrew’s body and extended for some distance around him.  “You didn’t do that on purpose?”

Neil stared at him blankly.  “How could I have done that?”

“Photoshop.  There’s a whole technique for making heat haze.”

Huh.  That was what it looked like.  “Why is it just in that weird shape though?”

“It’s your picture,” Rhemann laughed, “you tell me.”

“I don’t even know, I was just trying to capture him standing on that rock.”

Rhemann started playing around with the picture, making the outline of the heat haze more distinct, sharpening the contrast until… “That looks kind of like wings, doesn’t it?  Bet you didn’t know your friend here was an angel.”

Neil’s breath caught in his throat.  It was impossible; Rhemann laughed, “What a cool accident,” as he flipped to the next photo.  Neil shook himself back to reality. He stuffed down the revelations that threatened to surface and forced himself to concentrate.  When Rhemann was through reviewing everything, he sat and studied Neil for a long moment.

“I don’t think I’m going to offer you that internship,” he said.  Neil’s heart sank, and he bit the inside of his cheek. When had he started letting himself hope?  But Rhemann went on before he could fall too far. “I’m going to offer you a job. As I’m sure Betsy’s told you, we do a lot of the usual weddings and all that kind of stuff, but we also do a lot of commissioned photography of other stuff, animals and landscape and whatnot, and we sell framed artistic photos too. 

“You’d be doing a little bit of everything.  Probably you’d start off being second shooter at the weddings, just kind of helping out.  Our busy season starts in April, so you’ve got a month to get to know everyone and learn how it all works.  But these photos, they’d go right in the gallery and you’d make a commission on every one of ‘em.”

Neil was reeling by the time he left with a handshake agreement and a plan to go to Rhemann’s studio and meet the handful of other photographers the next day.  It felt like a dream that he would wake up from, only to find himself back on the street cold and alone. He let himself into the apartment and sat on the couch without turning on the lights, flipping the thumb drive over and over in his hands. 

Andrew’s latest post-it was stuck to the computer sitting on the coffee table, a couple of feet away.  It was too dark to read, but he knew what it said. _Because juvie was better than foster care_.  It was the first real answer he’d had in weeks; everything in the interim had been about silly stuff, stupid movie quotes and food and some asshole customer Neil had slipped up and insulted.  When Neil had finally asked Andrew why he had gone to prison, this had been the answer he’d received. It was not what he had meant, but he was pretty sure this answer was more enlightening anyway.

Thinking about Andrew had him flipping open the computer and calling up the picture of him on the rock.  Now that he had seen the version Rhemann had tweaked he couldn’t un-see it; it seemed obvious that the strange blurred effect looked like broad, feathery wings.  He remembered the time that Andrew had seemed to glow for a few seconds, and all the times he had seen live flames in his eyes. All the little details Andrew had known, his perfect timing, his mysterious appearances and disappearances all across the country, the warm support he had felt but not seen at the FBI… 

The fact that Neil had watched him get hit by a car, had seen blood bubbling out of his mouth and EMTs doing CPR, and then he had appeared unharmed the next night.

Fuck.  Neil dug his fingers into his hair, twisting, hoping the pain would bring him clarity.  This was impossible, proof he was going crazy. But hadn’t Andrew said that other people had watched out for him too?  His free hand moved to the scar from the bullet that grazed his collarbone and remembered the feeling of being yanked so it didn’t hit him center mass.  He recalled jumping out of a car and rolling across a lane of traffic and only getting road rash, all the times his mother had breathed “Lucky, lucky, lucky,” as she had sutured up wounds that should have gutted him, and something in him whispered, _what if it wasn’t luck?_  

  
He pulled out his pad of paper and played with his pen, starting and stopping a thousand times before he finally wrote, pressing down so hard he could feel the tip of the pen embedding in the paper, _How did you die?_

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm trying to catch up on replying to comments, I swear! But you guys are amazing and I can't tell you how rewarding you've made working on this project. I hope you enjoy this and the last chapter, which will be up on Sunday. Thank you so much for all your support, and I look forward to hearing what you think!


	17. Chapter 17

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Andrew has a choice to make, and gets a prod from an unexpected direction. Neil can't quite stop himself from hoping.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> It's finally done! This little piece of ridiculousness has been beyond fun to write, I'm going to miss it. Thanks again to @tntwme for the beta and all the cheerleading!

Andrew was officially bored of his assignment.  Four months in and Robin had stopped skinning herself with her razor; her mother had largely stopped making Robin’s trauma all about herself; and if her father was still being a dictatorial asshole Robin was beginning to push back.  Meekly, quietly, but pushing nonetheless. Her resilience was remarkable enough that Andrew reluctantly found himself respecting it, but that still didn’t make the situation interesting enough to detract from the constant tug west. Finally Andrew understood Aaron’s restlessness in scanning the screens for his next project.  But unlike Aaron who had no other bond, Andrew could never totally prevent himself from staring at Neil’s.

This time Neil’s rigid posture merited a second look.  He was rarely awake this late these days, let alone staring with such awful blankness at his computer.  Andrew went closer, ignoring whoever was saying his name as he shoved through everyone. The notepad was at Neil’s elbow, and Andrew felt something twist deep within him when he read the four words on it.  Almost against his will, his fingers reached out and brushed the screen, and he saw the whole thing.

Turning abruptly, he left the screen room and started his climb.  Before he could get too far, Coach appeared in front of him, the flames on his arms flaring higher than Andrew had ever seen them.  “Where are you running to?” Coach asked, though Andrew was certain he already knew everything.

“I can’t deal with their bullshit anymore,” Andrew said, gesturing over his shoulder to the Existential Crisis Center.  Never mind that he hadn’t heard a word they had said today.

Coach surveyed him, unimpressed by the lie.  “Tell him.”

“I thought the wings didn’t show on Earth,” Andrew retorted.

“They don’t.  If anybody else had snapped that picture, they would not have captured any difference.”

“Then why did he?”

“For the same reason you can’t maintain form with him, but have no trouble with the Crosses,” Coach retorted, rare exasperation infusing his tone.  “Your soul can’t lie to him.”

The realization burned his throat like bile; he swallowed it down.  “So, what, I’m supposed to tell someone who doesn’t know the definition of stability with a dictionary open in his hand that I’m a fucking angel?”  Andrew snorted. “That’s going to send him right over the edge.”

“It may, it may not.  He already believes it, even though he doesn’t want to.  You confirming it may in fact be what he needs to not lose his grasp.”

Andrew paced but didn’t try to get past Coach and didn’t turn back.  “And then what? He goes on with his life knowing an angel got him off once, and I keep watching over self-destructive people with no healthy concept of home.  How do you see that working, exactly?”

“The solution is obvious, even if you still refuse to see it.”

Andrew closed his eyes and stilled his feet, remembering the feel of gentle fingers on his face, the way Neil sounded, tasted.  And behind that, bigger than that, was the steady ease of the two of them coming home every night, the rhythm of Neil’s breathing as he fell asleep, the first bark of his laughter, his sharp rejoinders. Coach was offering it up to him like a gift he hadn’t earned. He opened his eyes. “Neil doesn’t get a say?”

“Of course he does.  You know my stance on free will.  You’re the one taking away any say he might have in the matter, not me.”

Well, fuck.  That had not occurred to him; he cursed himself internally.  He turned away, pacing to the nearest bank of clouds. When he turned back, Coach was gone, and his post-it notes and marker were in his hands.  Without hesitation, he popped the cap and filled the small square with letters. _Car Wreck_. 

The next night he left Robin’s family sleeping soundly after her first self-defense class and headed up to the screen room.  Neil was eating at Bee’s, a celebratory dinner if the fancy dishes and wine were any indication. Not that Neil was drinking; his glass held water.  Andrew watched the way Betsy’s eyes kept flicking to Neil, her concern showing beneath layers of good cheer with each forced smile from him, while Kelly spent the meal pressed up against Neil’s feet.  Then he followed as Neil went back to the apartment and the post-it stuck to the top of the notepad, nothing written beneath.

Days and nights passed with no additions to the pad, no messages crumpled up and thrown in the trash.  He watched as Neil said good-bye to the people at the grocery store among cheers of well-wishes. And he was watching a week later as that asshole Marco took Neil’s hand as they were leaving a cafe together and shyly kissed Neil’s unprotesting mouth.

Coach and Dan were the only ones in the screen room.  He looked up at Coach. “I think Neil has made his decision.”

“Maybe,” Coach said, uncharacteristically solemn.  “But it may not be the one you think.” His words were still hovering in the air when the tether tightened so painfully Andrew almost let himself give in to it. 

All the next day he struggled to dismiss it.  He had spent months perfecting the art of shoving that feeling into the background, but he suddenly couldn’t.  The next night he resisted the siren’s call of that screen until everyone had given their reports and filtered out.  When he let himself look he froze to see Neil asleep with his face pillowed on his arms on the counter and three words, written large on the pad.   _I miss you_ . 

He forced himself away from the screen to find the Archangel watching him with unfathomable eyes.  His hand was on the door when she spoke, freezing him in his tracks. “What are you trying to prove by denying both of you?”

“I don’t need him.  I don’t need anyone.” 

“You do not need each other, but there is nothing wrong with letting yourselves love each other.”

His mouth moved to form the denial, but he was unable to give himself voice; it felt like all power of speech had been plucked from him.  In the end he willed himself back to New Jersey, Dan’s words echoing in his head.

_Love_.  It was something that was as useless and paralyzing as _hope_.  He thought of all the crimes committed in its name, wars waged both private and public; of being told he didn’t understand brotherly love, of Tilda beating Aaron “out of love,” of Neil’s mother doing the same.  It was too easy to twist, to corrupt into a weapon more deadly than any knife.

He avoided the screen room, spending his time lurking around watching Robin’s family’s slow steps towards recovery and reading Robin’s mother’s collection of books on PTSD.  He wished this sort of fracture in a family could heal like a bone, just cast it and wait six weeks and miraculously it would be healed, stronger than before. This was different: a faltering step here, a whisper there; a slow coming together like birds flocking before migration, chaos interrupted by brief moments where they all seemed united.

One afternoon, he was sitting in the waiting room at Robin’s therapist’s office wearing his Betsy disguise and talking to Erin Cross as he did twice every week.  It was the first time he really saw that settled look in Erin’s face, and he commented on it.

Erin smiled, a soft, private thing.  “I’ve finally learned how to listen,” she said quietly.

“That can be a hard lesson,” Andrew-as-Bee said.

“Yes,” Erin nodded pensively.  “But isn’t that what love is? I mean, when you love someone, you figure out how to get out of your own way for them, you know?  It took me a long time to figure that out.”

Andrew had never heard it described that way.  He nodded as if he understood, and not long afterwards Robin emerged.  After the Crosses left, he found himself wandering around the town, thinking about what Erin had said, about what it meant to get out of your own way for somebody else.  He didn’t know how to reconcile it.

He rounded the corner and found himself outside the screen room.  “Subtle,” he said, pushing through the door and crossing his arms as he surveyed Coach and the Archangel.  “Very subtle.”

Coach shrugged from his place at the desk.  “You’ve always valued straightforwardness.”

Andrew leaned against the door jamb.  “So then what wisdom are you going to bestow on me today, O Wise One?”

Coach snorted, and Andrew almost laughed.  It was just so strange, to see Coach—God, Allah, the Creator, whatever the fuck he really was—being entertained by sarcasm.  Dan rustled her wings with vague irritation. “It has been almost a week since you checked in,” she said. “Robin is no longer a danger to herself.  It is time for you to decide your next step.”

Andrew could no more have avoided glancing at Neil’s screen than he could have punted Coach off a cloud.  Neil was asleep on the couch, naturally; The First Avenger was playing on the TV and Andrew felt a pang that had nothing to do with the bond.  He wanted to be down there with him; not because it was his job, or because of some stupid involuntary link out of a romance novel. No. He wanted to be down there because nobody else made him laugh like Neil did; nobody else made him _feel_. 

Nobody else made him want to get out of his own way.

It felt like losing a battle he had never really wanted to win anyway, defeat and triumph swirled together in a mélange of emotions he had no desire to unpack.  He didn’t have to say anything; he looked up at the pair of them and they read it on his face, or maybe they had already known.

“If you choose to return to Neil,” Coach said, “you will return to a mortal life with mortal limitations.  You will age, you will need to eat, you will need to sleep. When Neil dies, you will come back here and rejoin the GAP.  We may also…request…that you do some work for us while you are there, but otherwise your life will be your own.”

Andrew failed to see the catch.  “How does this work?”

“When you’re ready, you go back down,” Dan said, as if that was obvious.

He stared at Dan, trying to figure out what he was missing.  There had to be more to this. He glanced at Coach, but found no help there.  “What, no…I don’t know, crack of thunder? No great existential lessons? No designation of moral imperative, nothing?”

Coach looked amused, and the voice that emanated out of him was powerful enough it nearly took Andrew off his feet.  “If you wish for drama, I can give you drama. Any existential lessons you need are for you to learn, you can’t cheat your way out of the work, but you can learn them as well or better on Earth than you can up here. And you seem to have plenty of moral imperative of your own.” 

Andrew’s brain hurt.  He still couldn’t fathom this, why he of all people was getting a second—no, a third—chance.  Coach’s flames rose, higher and higher, until they consumed him; Andrew blinked, and he was gone.  “Drama queen,” he muttered.

Dan laughed, surprising him.  “You’re the one who wanted drama.”  She stretched her wings, rolling her neck, looking more human than he was used to.  “It’s the middle of the night in Denver,” she said. “Take the rest of the night for yourself.”  Her wings snapped shut and she too disappeared.

Andrew stumbled out of the Existential Crisis Center, feeling completely off-balance.  He didn’t know where to go, so he just walked, following one of the curved paths through the clouds.  The only unsurprising moment of the night was when Renee materialized next to him as he passed one of the gaps in the clouds.  She didn’t say anything, and for once he didn’t feel her thinking at him either.

His patience wore off before hers did.  “What.”

She gave a gentle laugh.  “I wasn’t saying anything.”

“But you’re here.”

“I just wanted to spend a little time with you before you go.”

Andrew gritted his teeth so hard if they’d been real they would have cracked.  “Why is this okay? Why do I get to go back and…and live, and everyone else is just stuck here?”

“Not everyone views it that way,” Renee reproved.  “And a bond like you have, that is not to be taken lightly.  It would be a crime to dismiss it.”

“But…”  He trailed off.  It wasn’t like he really cared if the others found their Reason. 

Renee went on when he didn’t finish his sentence.  “We don’t know what choice Neil will make when he dies, there is no guarantee that you will be able to be with him then.  This is a crapshoot, and you have a chance to cash in your chips. Nobody grudges you that.”

“I don’t care if they do or don’t,” Andrew said, and she laughed again.

“Then what?”

There was no good answer to that question.  Nothing where she wouldn’t feel his lie through her wings, unless he did the impossible and stripped himself bare.  Her wing lightly brushed his and he felt her solidarity through the faint touch.

“Someday,” Renee murmured, “you’ll realize what eternity actually means.  It’s hard to really understand, when your life has been short and your time here shorter.  But even if you and Neil have a lifetime together, you’ll be back here and it will seem like a single night’s dream you must wake up from.”

Andrew looked at her and wondered how long she had been here.  There was so much he hadn’t bothered to learn, but Renee was right.  There would always be time up here; the only thing that made time on Earth precious was that it was finite.  So he let Renee lead him to where the others were watching a giant storm over the Atlantic. They greeted him casually and he sat down on the clouds not far from the edge, pretending not to listen to Nicky’s insinuating jokes and Allison’s more pointed comments.  His brother sat next to him, wings nearly touching, as quiet as he was. When it was finally time, Aaron nudged him with his knee. “Make good memories,” Aaron said. Andrew nodded; there was nothing he could say to that. He stood and turned to find Kevin looming over him.

After a pause that stretched into awkwardness, Kevin held out his hand.  Andrew was slow to grasp it; Kevin met his firm hold with a nod and a slow smile.  With that, Andrew blinked and willed himself back to Earth.

*****

Neil got off the bus at the entrance to the trail, shouldering his camera bag.  It had been months since he had gone hiking, but finally the scent of spring had penetrated the city and embraced him, drawing him out almost against his will.  He had never been in the mountains in spring, not in the U.S. The peaks were still covered in snow, but this trail did not aspire to those heights.

He took his time wandering along the narrow dirt path through meadows dotted with blue and yellow.  It was nothing like the last time he had been here, alone save for the elk wandering through a silent world of white.  Now he was assaulted by colors and sounds and scents, birds calling and squirrels chattering, the breeze filtering through the trees, carrying with it the warm smell of damp earth.

A squirrel yelled at him from the red trunk of a cedar.  His camera was to his eye in a flash, and he grinned to himself as he saw the perfect capture through the viewfinder.  It still tasted unfamiliar, this strange contentment that he couldn’t quite call happiness.

The rock was nearby, he knew.  Through a copse of trees and up a little hill.  He resisted the pull of it, the need to check if Andrew was there.  The whole idea was ridiculous anyway, that he would come back now after weeks of silence.  Neil wished he could go back to the day after he got that note, two words laying an impossible truth open before him.  He should have said something, anything. But words had failed him, and he had let Andrew’s fragile trust fall into an abyss of silence.

He hadn’t even been surprised when he had finally written his own truth out a few days ago and gotten nothing in response. _I miss you_.  Those words still sat on top of a pad on the counter, a penance for him to see every time he walked past.  He had busied himself with his new job and helping Bee prepare her garden for spring, and tried not to think about when the apartment had radiated with unexpected warmth.

It was tempting to turn back, take a different trail or head home and forget about this all together.  But his feet drew him inexorably on, and he finally broke through the trees.

There was someone sitting on the rock, _his_ rock, their back to him and the sunlight reflecting off their bright hair.  Neil’s breath hitched; he wanted to run up there, but his feet that seconds ago had been so eager to move were now frozen to the spot.  It had to be Andrew; it couldn’t be. Andrew was an impossibility.

Neil managed to uproot his feet and head up the gentle slope.  The scuff of his boot on dirt had the person on the rock rising and turning to face him, and Neil had to blink hard at the sight of features as familiar to him as his own.  Andrew waited for him, no particular expression on his face and banked embers in his eyes. He looked so solid, and as Neil got closer he could feel the heat of his body, a tiny oasis against the damp chill in the air.  “You’re not real, are you,” Neil whispered.

Andrew raised an eyebrow.  “Been doing a lot of hallucinogens while I’ve been away?”

“But you can’t be.  You’re…dead.”

“Stop being overwhelmed by technicalities.”

A laugh barked out of Neil.  “You’re impossible.”

Andrew shrugged.  “And yet you have photographic evidence of my existence.”

The ironic quirk of his lips was almost enough to convince Neil; he just couldn’t believe his imagination was capable of inventing it.  “Why are you here?”

“I saw your note.”

“But…”  He didn’t know what he wanted to say.   _But that was days ago_ , when Neil had gone longer without responding.   _But you’ve moved on_ , when Neil could see each little post-it note, a rainbow of paper scattered around the apartment.   _But I am nothing_ , when Neil wanted so badly for that not to be true.  “I’m doing okay, you know,” he finally settled for. “I don’t need you to watch over me anymore.”

“I know,” Andrew murmured, looking up at him through gold-tipped lashes.  “That’s why I can stay.”

Stay. The word reverberated between them but Neil couldn’t quite believe it.  He could accept the concept of a guardian angel more easily than the possibility of Andrew staying. “And you’re really here.”

Andrew lifted Neil’s hand to his throat, placing his fingers over his pulse as he had once before in a dream.  Neil could feel it throbbing, strong and steady and maybe a little quick despite Andrew’s calm expression.

“As long as you want me to be.”

Neil’s hand slid up to cup that strong jaw that he remembered from all those months ago.  Andrew shivered slightly at the touch and Neil felt a ghost of a smile flit across his face as he let his hand drop.  “I need to be sure I have this right: you are giving up being an actual angel to stay here on Earth with me?”

Andrew shrugged.  “Well, I will spend a literal eternity being an angel, while according to my calculations you are approximately twenty two days overdue to get your head bashed in.”

Neil shoved his shoulder, only succeeding in knocking himself off-balance.  “Fuck off,” he said, and then he was laughing, hard enough he nearly teetered off the rock.  Andrew’s fingers hooked into the neck of his hoodie and stabilized him.

“What did I just say?” Andrew said, shaking his head. 

“Something about wanting to spend eternity with me?” Neil grinned.

“Nope, that wasn’t it.  I think it was that I wanted to be there when you finally get what’s coming to you.”

“Funny, that’s definitely not what I heard.  Maybe it was that you wanted to kiss me?”

Andrew hummed thoughtfully.  “Swap out the ‘es’s’ for ‘el’s’ and you might be right.”

Neil laughed again; he hadn’t felt like this since before Andrew left, so warm and full of light.  He leaned down the couple of inches. “Can I?”

With a short nod, Andrew stretched to close the distance between them.  At the first hard press of his lips, Neil was lost; lost in the feel and taste and scent of him. He wondered how losing himself could feel so much like being found.

Far too soon Andrew broke away and hopped off the rock.  Neil watched him, looking for some whisper of wings. There was nothing but his familiar sturdy frame, and Neil thought maybe he was going insane after all.

When he caught up to Andrew, he started to ask, then stopped himself.  They were back in the copse of trees when Andrew snagged his sleeve and tugged him around to face him.  “Spit it out, Josten.”

But suddenly Neil didn’t even care.  He didn’t care if Andrew was an angel or not, if he had wings hidden somewhere or if that was just a fluke of his camera.  If maybe Andrew was as crazy as he was. The only thing he knew was that Andrew would never hurt him, and he had never been so sure of anything in his life. 

“You’re really here to stay?”  It was the only question that actually mattered.

Andrew cocked his head and stared up him; Neil felt like he was being x-rayed.  “Yes,” Andrew said. He pulled Neil down into a bruising kiss. Warm softness enveloped them and Neil melted against him.  There were still so many questions he needed answered, but that could all wait.

When Neil was sore-lipped and breathless Andrew released him.  “This isn’t going to be easy,” he warned.

“What, because our lives have been so easy up to this point?” Neil asked.  “I didn’t expect easy.”

They started heading back down the trail, Neil’s camera forgotten where it hung around his neck.  Everything felt surreal, the ground less solid than normal, the air thicker. “Wait, I just realized something,” he said as they started down a gentle slope.  “I’ve literally been touched by an angel.”

Andrew shot him an evil look.  “Okay, that’s it. I’m going back.”  He made as if to walk away and Neil grabbed his sleeve, laughing.

“Let’s go home,” Neil suggested.  Andrew resisted for a moment longer, then started walking, not pulling his sleeve out of Neil’s grasp.

“I expected more of an interrogation from you,” Andrew said casually as they neared the bus stop.

Neil huffed a quiet laugh. “Honestly so did I.  I think I’m still...processing, I guess. I think I’m hoping I’ll have some time to figure this all out.  And I think...I think I trust you.”

Andrew didn’t take his eyes off the approaching bus.  “Well, nobody ever said you had good judgment.”

Once they were seated and headed back into the city, Neil leaned over to mutter in Andrew’s ear.  “You were the one who pointed out that I keep getting in my own way, back when I was still in the hotel.  Is it wrong that maybe I don’t want to do that with you?”

Andrew froze for a long moment.  Slowly, he turned to look at Neil, his expression unreadable.  “And you say I’m the impossible one.”

  
Neil didn’t understand what he meant, nor why that soft warmth enveloped him again.  Andrew’s fingers threaded into his hair and he leaned into the touch that somehow affected every inch of his skin.  It didn’t matter that they were on a public bus; it didn’t matter that he didn’t know what the future held; it didn’t matter that Andrew might be sort of dead and Neil might have never really been alive.  All that mattered was that for the first time he could remember, he thought maybe he was looking at more than survival. Maybe he was figuring out what it was to live. Maybe they both were.  

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Didn't I tell you it would be okay? I hope you enjoyed this, and I can't wait to hear what you think. Thank you all for your comments and support, they have meant the world and even if I've been ridiculously late replying I've read every one of them.

**Author's Note:**

> Comments are always welcomed and spur on faster writing! Also, just for the record, the CPR technique Neil tried is called a Precordial Thump. It is no longer taught in CPR classes because it can drive broken ribs into places they don't belong if not done correctly, BUT I have used it to resuscitate more than one dog. (If anyone is interested, it works because it causes a small jolt of electricity to go through the heart.)


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